Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926

On 26 May 1918, the Western Siberian Commissariat emerged from the underground, in the wake of the collapse of Soviet power in the area during the revolt of the Czechoslovak Legion, and, on 1 June 1918 placed itself at the forefront of the Democratic Counter-Revolution, proclaiming its provisional authority over Western Siberia pending the reconvening of the Siberian Regional Duma. It then transferred its headquarters to Omsk, published a moderate-left program that envisaged the maintenance of some elements of the Soviet system (including keeping certain industrial concerns under state control and a toleration of workers’ soviets), and began the formation of the armed force that was to become the Siberian Army. Its Governing Council (consisting of four rather obscure members of the local organization of the Party of Socialists-Revolutionaries, P. Ia. Mikhailov, V. O. Sidorov, M. E. Lindberg, and B. D. Markov) met with opposition, however, from its own head of the Department of Military Affairs, A. N. Grishin-Almazov, and its Business Cabinet, chaired by V. V. Sapozhnikov, in which more conservative (and forceful) representatives of Siberian regionalism predominated. The machinations of these elements, together with the scheming at Omsk of other, less radical members of the Derber government (notably I. A. Mikhailov), forced the Western Siberian Commissariat to cede power to the Provisional Siberian Government on 1 July 1918, in what could be said to be the beginning of the end for the Democratic Counter-Revolution in Siberia.

Western Siberian upRising. During 1921 and 1922, western Siberia experienced the largest but probably the least well-known uprising ever seen against Soviet power, one that united much of the peasantry with Cossacks, workers, and elements of the region’s intelligentsia in demands for an end to prodrazverstka and to the monopoly of power held by the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks), although (like the Tambov Rebellion) it was always described as a kulak uprising, organized by the Party of Socialists-Revolutionaries (PSR), in Soviet historiography.

The rising began on 31 January 1921, in the Ishim district of Tiumen′ guberniia, and had soon engulfed all of Tiumen′, Omsk, and Akmolinsk gubernii and the eastern stretches of Cheliabinsk and Ekaterinburg gubernii, with some 100,000 rebels actively involved. During the spring of 1921, transport on the Trans-Siberian Railway was periodically interrupted by the insurgents, who also captured a number of major towns and cities, among them Petropavlovsk (14 February 1921), Tobol′sk (21 February 1921), Kokchetav (21 February 1921), Surgut (10 March 1921), Berezov (21 March 1921), Obdorsk (1 April 1921), and Karkaralinsk (5 April 1921), while the town of Ishim changed hands a number of times. In rebel-controlled areas, local elections were held under the banner “For Soviets without Communists,” and efforts were made to weld partisan forces into a regular army under V. A. Rodinym (described in Soviet sources as a member of the PSR who had fought for the Whites). Commanders were drawn, predominantly, from among the leaders of the Siberian partisans who had previously operated against the White forces of Admiral A. V. Kolchak and veterans of the First World War (among them the peasants Vasilii Zhetovskii and Stepna Danilov, both natives of Tobol′sk guberniia; Petr Shevchenko of Ishim; and Nikolai Bulatov, a peasant from Kurgan who had served as an ensign in the tsarist army and as a Vsevobuch instructor with the Red Army).

To organize the suppression of the uprising, on 12 February 1921 a troika was formed—of I. N. Smirnov (chair of the Bolsheviks’ Siberian Revolutionary Committee), V. I. Shorin (commander in chief of the Armed Forces of the Republic for Siberia), and I. P. Pavlunovskii (chairman of the Siberian Cheka)—and a number of Red units and armored trains were dispatched to the region, including special ChON forces. Large-scale repression ensued, which together with the concessions announced at the 10th Party Congress in March 1921 (the New Economic Policy), was sufficient to quell the uprising by the summer of that year, although pockets of resistance held out until 1922 in isolated districts.