"The cause of the Civil War in the Kuban was the land conflict." Historian Andrei Baranov on the consequences of the February Revolution. Kuban and the Black Sea in the period of revolutions and civil war

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1. Civil war in the Kuban

civil war kuban soviet

The civil war in Russia is one of the complex, multi-valued, internally contradictory topics of Russian historiography. Despite the fact that many researchers have repeatedly turned to it, there are still many debatable problems within its framework. Problems of this kind include identifying the causes of the defeat of the White movement. Apparently, one of them is the contradictions within the anti-Bolshevik camp. To a large extent, this was facilitated by the desire of the Cossacks (at least, of a certain politically active part of it) to find their own special path of development. Consideration of various aspects of the political searches of the Don and Kuban Cossacks during the years of the Civil War in Russia is the purpose of the abstract. The determining factors of this process include: the internal situation of the Cossack territories and regions, their relationship with each other and with other participants in the anti-Bolshevik movement.

The Cossacks, which was once a symbol of freedom and freedom, eventually became one of the estates Russian Empire. The revolutionary events of 1917 did not bypass the Cossack regions. Like Russia as a whole, the Cossacks found themselves at a crossroads. The main issue of political life was the question of choosing a further path of development, which ultimately led to a fratricidal massacre. At the same time, the revolution and the Civil War not only split the country (as some researchers believe), but rather emphasized and revealed the contradictions that existed within Russian society as a whole and the Cossack regions as its component.

The factors that had an important impact on the course and outcome of the Civil War include, in particular, the stratification within the Cossacks and their relationship with the nonresident population of the Cossack regions. One of the main reasons for the participation of the majority of the Cossacks in the war on the side of the anti-Bolshevik forces was the desire to preserve their privileges. However, the duality of their position lay in the fact that, while defending their estate privileges, the Cossacks struggled with such remnants of feudalism as estate duties. Apparently, this was one of the factors that initially the bulk of the Cossacks took a neutral attitude towards the Bolshevik authorities.

A particularly great influence on the Cossacks had the promise of the Bolsheviks to stop the hard, devastating world war, which weighed heavily on the Cossacks, who bore the brunt of it. Therefore, the Cossack units that came from the front, supporting the Bolsheviks' slogan of peace, did not prevent the establishment of Soviet power in the Cossack regions. The Bolsheviks enjoyed the greatest sympathy among the poorest sections of the Cossacks. The benevolent attitude of the Cossacks towards the Soviet government was also facilitated by the fact that the long separation from the economic situation due to being at the front to some extent declassed part of the Cossacks, dulling the instinct of the small owner. However, having initially staked on the out-of-town population, the Bolshevik government prompted them to actively campaign for the redistribution of land. And here the Cossacks, who did not want to part with their class privileges, could not stand aside. Even the Don Revolutionary Committee, elected on January 23, 1918 in the village of Kamenskaya, and which actually supported the Soviet government in its struggle against Ataman A.M. Kaledin, did not want to hear about the redistribution of land in favor of non-residents. Members of the Committee "reacted very unfriendly to the claims of non-residents to the general division of the Don land and were not at all going to end with general Cossack privileges."

The same attitude to the land issue was in the Kuban. Here the regional government, trying not to aggravate relations with non-residents and the poorest part of the Cossacks, in every possible way delayed the solution of the agrarian problem. The nonresident part of the population at first put up with this situation. So, at the congress of representatives from the settlements of the Kuban region, the faction of non-residents adopted an appeal to the Kuban Rada and military units, in which it brought to their attention that “it does not intend to make any claims to the Cossack share lands and to the Cossack military property, being convinced that the Constituent the assembly will find an opportunity to meet the urgent needs of the non-resident population of the region, without violating the interests of the working Cossacks. However, the propaganda activities of the Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, Socialist-Revolutionaries and the October events of 1917 contributed to the activation of the out-of-town population. In December 1917, the 2nd regional congress of representatives of the Cossacks, non-residents and highlanders of the Kuban decided to cancel the planted fee. In February 1918, under pressure from the poorest Cossacks and part of the nonresident population, the Kuban Regional Rada was forced to publish a "Draft Rules on the Settlement of Land and Agricultural Relations in the Kuban Region." But this could no longer prevent performances from other cities. Unauthorized seizures and redistribution of land began throughout the region. The Executive Committee of the Soviets of the Kuban region declared the Kuban Regional Rada and the Kuban government illegal. Parts of the 39th Infantry Division and detachments of local revolutionary forces launched an offensive aimed at overthrowing the Kuban government. Despite the unfolding events, the Cossacks for the most part took a wait-and-see attitude. This is confirmed by the facts that it allowed the dispersal of the small Military Circle in Novocherkassk, the expulsion of the Kuban Regional Rada and the government from Yekaterinodar, as well as the occupation of its territories by Soviet troops, which were resisted mainly by parts of the nascent Volunteer Army.

The origins of the neutrality of the Cossacks quite accurately reveals in his memoirs A.I. Denikin: “The mood of the Don Cossacks has become clearer. They do not understand at all either Bolshevism or "Kornilovism". They agree with our explanations, but they seem to have little faith. Well-fed, rich and, apparently, would like to benefit from both the "white" and the "red" movement. Both ideologies are now still alien to the Cossacks, and most of all they are afraid of getting involved in internecine strife. This statement is also true for the Kuban Cossacks.

2. The attitude of the Cossacks to the Soviet power in late 1917 - early 1918

The attitude of the Cossacks to the Soviet government is recorded in the memoirs of many eyewitnesses of those events, in particular A.P. Bogaevsky: “Poisoned by propaganda at the front, combatant Cossacks calmly waited for Soviet power, sincerely or not believing that this is the real people's power, which will not do anything bad to them, ordinary people. And that she would destroy the former bosses - the chieftain, generals, officers, and, by the way, the landowners, and to hell with them ... In general, the mood of the entire Cossacks in the mass did not differ much from the general mood of the Russian peasantry: the Cossacks had not yet experienced on their neck all the charms of Soviet governance... The rest "kept neutrality".

Despite the fiery speeches of General L.G. Kornilov, the Cossacks did not join the ranks of the Volunteer Army. It was no less indifferent to calls to join the Kuban army, created by the Kuban regional government.

The policy of neutrality, characteristic of the bulk of the Cossacks in the early years of the civil war, was, according to A.A. Zaitsev, an expression of a certain psychology of the front-line Cossacks. Cossacks-front-line soldiers did not want to take up arms either against "their" prosperous villagers, or against non-residents, with whom they were connected by ties of front-line brotherhood.

Tired of the war, the Cossacks, partially saturated with the same spirit of Social Democratic and Socialist-Revolutionary ideas, did not support the Volunteer Army. During the "Ice" campaign, the Cossacks, for the most part, met the volunteers "either indifferently or with hostility."

3. Statement of the Cossacks against the Bolsheviks

During the period from spring to autumn 1918, in the Don and Kuban, there was a transition from supporting Soviet power by the poorest Cossacks, including front-line Cossacks, with the neutrality of the bulk of the middle peasants, to speaking out against the Bolsheviks of the majority of the Cossack population. A number of factors contributed to this change in the mood of the Don and Kuban Cossacks.

Firstly, in the Cossack, the instinct of the owner won over the instinct of the worker, which was largely facilitated by the land policy of the Soviet authorities in the Cossack regions. At the first stage of agrarian reforms (spring 1918), the Soviets endowed peasant and Cossack poor households with land plots due to the confiscation of church, monastery, large privately owned lands. This confiscation was also used by the kulaks, who sought to appropriate the landlords' lands, implements and livestock. However, when the question arose about the fate of military lands, the restructuring of the class land use of the Cossacks and equalizing it with the rest of the mass of the rural population, the kulak part of the Cossacks openly opposed the Soviet government. Subsequently, she was supported by the middle peasants and part of the Cossack poor. As noted by S.M. Budyonny, “some Cossacks, as soon as it came to allocating land to non-residents, said: “We are not against the Soviets, but don’t touch our land, don’t give it to you.”

Secondly, the class policy pursued by the Bolsheviks at the first stage of the civil war contributed to inciting class strife. Non-residents, using the approval and support of the Soviet authorities, sought to solve their problems (primarily the land issue) at the expense of the Cossacks, and at the same time settle scores with the latter. This led to an increase in pogroms of the Cossacks, executions and robberies by the nonresident population. According to A.I. Denikin, "the majority of non-residents took one or another, albeit indirectly, participation in the deprivation of the Cossacks."

Thirdly, among the Ukrainian partisans who retreated under the onslaught of the Germans to the Cossack regions, looting of the Cossack villages under the slogan of fighting the counter-revolution became widespread. Looting was also widespread among some of the Red Army detachments, which consisted of non-residents. All this, as well as acts of “decossackization”, which in 1918 had a spontaneous nature of requisitions in the form of seizure of weapons, horses, harness and equipment, carried out in a form offensive to the Cossacks, led to the fact that the middle peasants of the Cossacks succumbed to the agitation of the Cossack leaders and openly opposed the Soviet regime. “Humiliated morally, ruined by material but also physically exterminated, the Kuban Cossacks (and not only the Kuban Cossacks - O.R.) soon shook off every raid of Bolshevism and began to rise.”

All the above reasons for the change in the mood of the Cossacks were noticed and subsequently taken into account by the Bolsheviks. So, G.K. Ordzhonikidze noted that “at the very first attempts to carry out a land reform, the Cossacks became hostile to the Soviet regime ... On the other hand, the retreating Ukrainian troops continued their outrages and robberies in the Kuban region. There were many inept, extremely tactless actions on the part of individual local workers who were in power.

However, despite the change in attitude towards the Bolsheviks, the relationship of the Cossacks with the command of the Volunteer Army was still complex and contradictory. The main knot of contradictions was, on the one hand, the desire of part of the Cossacks to maintain independence from Russia (both from the Bolshevik and anti-Bolshevik), on the other hand, the desire of the leadership of the Volunteer Army to subjugate the Cossack forces, both in military and social terms. - economic and political issues. Oil was added to the fire by the fact that the Cossacks saw in the volunteers, first of all, representatives and defenders of the obsolete Russian monarchy. At the same time, in the Volunteer Army, “if not a hostile, then, in any case, an unfriendly attitude was created towards the multi-stage Kuban authorities, which were too reminiscent of the Sovdep, hated by the officers, and too sharply dissociated themselves from the all-Russian idea.”

Already at the first meeting between the volunteers and the commander of the troops of the Kuban region, General V.L. Pokrovsky in the village of Shenjiy in mid-March 1918 there was a skirmish. The first clearly showed their desire to subjugate the Kuban. The union of the Volunteer Army with the Cossacks, according to the leadership of the volunteers, could only occur on two main conditions: the abolition of the Kuban government and the Rada (this showed the unwillingness of the white generals to recognize the right to state independence for the Kuban) and the subordination of the ataman of the Kuban Cossack army to the commander of the Volunteer Army.

4. Formation of the Kuban army

On March 17, 1918, at a meeting of representatives of the Kuban with the command of the Volunteer Army in the village of Novodmitrievskaya, an agreement was signed according to which the Kuban government detachment was transferred to full subordination to General L.G. Kornilov, and the commander of the troops of the Kuban Territory with his chief of staff were recalled to the Kuban government to form the Kuban army. According to this agreement, the Legislative Rada, the Military Government and the chieftain were to continue their activities, contributing to the military activities of the commander of the Volunteer Army. As General A.P. Bogaevsky “in this union there was no mutual trust and sincerity. Only severe necessity forced both sides to come together. Subsequent events fully confirmed this. The lines concerning the formation of the Kuban army “introduced at the insistence of the Kuban representatives, according to A.I. Denikin, - mainly, allegedly only for the moral satisfaction of the deposed commander of the troops, they subsequently created great complications in the relationship between the high command and the Kuban.

The desire to ignore the Kuban authorities and assert their own was also manifested in the appointment of General Denikin on the eve of the first April assault on Yekaterinodar as Governor General of the Kuban Region.

In the future, with the occupation of the volunteer units of most of the territory of the Kuban, the policy of the command of the Volunteer Army in relation to the Kuban becomes more and more adamant and tough. This left an imprint on the relationship of Kuban Cossacks with volunteers. So, in one of the documents of that period it is said that the view of the Volunteer Army as a liberation army "begins to fade under the influence of the illegal actions of many units and persons of the army who behave in the republic as in a conquered country." The replacement of the Red Terror by the Whites and the monarchist slogans escaping from the ranks of the volunteers, as well as the slogans "one and indivisible", gradually repelled part of the Cossacks from Denikin's army. Local independentists contributed a lot to this with their propaganda. However, during the Second Kuban campaign, disagreements between the Kuban authorities and A.I. Denikin has not yet touched the ordinary Cossacks. According to D.V. Lekhovich: “It followed its officers. And the Kuban officers - pupils of Russian military schools - looked at the events through the eyes of a Russian officer. They were distrustful of the activities of their government, and many of them were ready to deal without ceremony with independent leaders. And they knew it very well."

One of the reasons for the disagreement between the Volunteer Army and the Cossacks (especially the Don) was the orientation of the latter towards Germany as a possible ally in the fight against the Bolsheviks. The command of the Volunteer Army adhered to the former orientation towards the allies in the Entente. In addition to the task of liberating Russia from the Bolsheviks, the leaders of the White movement pursued the goal of preserving the integrity of Russian territory. From these positions, General Denikin and his entourage believed that in addition to the fight against the Bolsheviks, it was necessary to fight Germany and stop any independent attempts to secede from Russia. At the same time, the Don people, represented by the government and the chieftain, considered it their main task to liberate the territory of the Don from the Bolsheviks, and in this struggle they were ready to accept any support. Not bound by a direct obligation to England and France, they perceived Germany as a force that contributed to their goals and objectives. Here it is quite possible to agree with A.A. Gordeev, who noted that the appearance of the German armed forces within the borders of the Don Cossacks Region was perceived by the Cossacks and the ataman as a certain support for the allies in the fight against the Bolsheviks. Although, of course, Germany was perceived by the Don people as a forced ally, chosen according to the principle of the least evil. We find confirmation of this in the order of the Don ataman P.N. Krasnov, given on May 4, 1918: “Don takes into account the fact that part of the territory is occupied by German troops, looks at them not as enemies, but as allies in the fight against the Bolsheviks and tries to use them to arm and supply all the means of fighting his army” .

The Entente orientation of General Denikin and his entourage and the Germanophile views of P.N. Krasnov left their mark not only on the relationship between them, but also on strategic plans during the Civil War. One of the reasons for the June campaign against the Kuban of the Volunteer Army was the unwillingness to act together with the Don Cossacks, who by that time had openly adopted a German orientation.

At the same time, the leadership of the Volunteer Army understood the need for an alliance with the Cossacks. On the opening day of the Kuban Rada in Yekaterinodar on November 1, 1918, General Denikin, calling for unity, declared that “the volunteer army recognizes the need both now and in the future for the widest autonomy constituent parts Russian state and extremely careful attitude to the age-old way of life of the Cossacks. Despite this statement, many opponents of A.I. Denikin was considered to be his slogan about "non-prejudice", i.e. about the non-determination of forms of government in Russia and about the place of the Cossack territories within Russia, a common political trick. In their eyes, Denikin always remained a supporter of "one and indivisible" Russia and a defender of the monarchical system. According to P.N. Krasnov, "General Denikin had nothing on his banner except the slogan of a united and indivisible Russia."

However, despite sharp disagreements, at the end of December 1918, General A.I. Denikin as Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces in the South of Russia (VSYUR) and subordinating the Don Army to him. Among the reasons for making such a decision, one can single out, in particular, the revolution in Germany, which entailed the withdrawal of the occupying German troops from the territory of the Cossack lands, which caused the weakening of the Don and Kuban independentists by the approach of the Bolshevik front to the borders of the Don and the strengthening of the positions of England and France, and, consequently, Denikin .

An important factor in the relationship between the volunteers and the Cossacks was the fact that the Volunteer Army was formed on Cossack territory. Its main bases were also located here. It is no coincidence that after the liberation of the Cossack regions from the power of the Bolsheviks, relations between the leadership of the Volunteer Army and the Cossack political leaders escalated even more. A number of Cossack politicians wanted to play an even more important role in solving both military and political issues. However, their views, reflecting mainly local interests, very often ran counter to the opinion of the high command. In particular, the latter considered the liberation of the Cossack territories from Bolshevik rule to be only part of a strategic plan to liberate the entire territory of Russia. Representatives of the Don and Kuban Cossacks, for the most part, believed that with the liberation of the Cossack regions, the fight against Soviet power could be considered basically over. As R. Medvedev rightly noted in his book “October Revolution”: “... having thrown off Soviet power at home, the Cossacks had no desire to go further and conquer Russia for the white generals.”21 This caused sharp discontent on the part of the volunteers. The attitude was rather aggravated by the fact that, meeting opposition from the Don and, especially, the Kuban authorities, A.I. Denikin constantly had to interfere in the internal affairs of the Cossack regions, which, in turn, caused dissatisfaction with the Cossack authorities. All this created a tense atmosphere of mutual hostility, which could not but affect the morale and condition of the anti-Bolshevik troops.

Based on the fact that independent tendencies had more weight in the Kuban than on the Don, the relationship here with the command of the All-Union Socialist Republic was sharper and more tense. It is no coincidence that A.I. Denikin did not want the creation of the Kuban army, although the Kubans constantly and persistently sought this, referring to such a precedent as the Don Army and the promises of volunteer command during the First Kuban campaign. He understood that the creation of such an army would only give an extra trump card in the hands of local independents, and, given the attraction of some of them to Ukraine, it would turn them into a dangerous enemy in the rear of the volunteers.

In May 1919, in connection with the change of the Kuban government, relations between the Kuban and the command of the VSYUR escalated. At this time, the pro-Denikin government of F.S. Sushkov was replaced by P.I. Kurgansky, who expressed the interests of the Black Sea part of the Cossacks.

Relations between the Kuban and Denikin's people became especially aggravated in connection with the dispatch of a delegation of representatives of the Kuban to the Paris Peace Conference. The main task of the delegation was to achieve recognition, if not state independence, then at least the autonomy of the Kuban.

On February 5, 1919, the Kuban and Don delegations, together with representatives of Ukraine and Belarus, addressed the Supreme Command of the Entente Powers in Odessa with a memorandum. It proposed a project for the creation of Russia on a federal basis by "a voluntary agreement, as equals with equals, of those state entities that crystallized on the ruins of old Russia." Under these "state formations" were understood, first of all, the territories of the Don, Kuban, Ukraine and Belarus. In an effort to get rid of the guardianship of the main command of the All-Union Socialist League, the representatives of the Don and Kuban asked the Supreme Command of the Entente Powers to provide them with material and, above all, military assistance directly. For the same purpose, the memorandum carried the idea of the need to create independent armies in the Cossack territories and the formation of a common operational headquarters with the powers of the Accord "without its interference in the political and internal affairs of the named state formations."

In Paris, the Kubans carried out the same idea, but with a clear demand to recognize the Kuban as an "independent state entity." At the same time, it was emphasized that "the Kuban Cossacks do not want to be part of Soviet Russia, just as they do not want to be tsarist and generally monarchist in Russia."

In fact, the activities of the Kuban delegation in Paris were reduced mainly to two memorandums and private conversations (for example, with the American President W. Wilson). Despite the fact that the Kuban delegation was not admitted to the peace conference, the speeches of its members and the submitted memorandums left their mark on the subsequent relationship between the commander-in-chief of the All-Russian Union of Youth and part of the members of the Kuban Rada. These relations were especially aggravated by the agreement concluded in July 1919 by the Kuban Parisian delegation with representatives of the Mejlis of the Mountainous Republic. According to this agreement, units of the Kuban army, if they were on the territory of the republic, were to be operationally subordinate to its military command. As we will see later, the fact of concluding an agreement between the Kuban and the highlanders, which was actually directed against the command of the All-Union Socialist League, later turned out to be in the hands of the latter.

After the assassination of the Chairman of the Rada, M.S. Ryabovol on June 27, 1919, who made an anti-Denikin speech on the first day of the South Russian Conference, the Council openly proclaimed the need to fight not only the Red Army, but also the monarchism that flourished in the army of General Denikin. “By the beginning of the autumn of 1919, many Rada deputies were vigorously promoting the separation of their region from Russia and did not hesitate to scold the Denikin government. They in every possible way undermined the authority of the Kuban ataman, calling him Denikin's henchman, and removed from the top management of the region all the Cossacks who sympathized with the ideas of the Volunteer Army. And already in the form of an open challenge to the white command, they negotiated with Georgia and Petliura ... The situation became extremely tense, as propaganda directed against the army and its command gradually began to penetrate the ranks of the Kuban Cossacks at the front.

The most ardent independentists were the Black Sea part of the Kuban Cossacks, among which pro-Ukrainian sentiments were especially strongly developed. According to General Denikin, the word "Chernomorets" has become synonymous with a Ukrainophile and a separatist. Linear Cossacks, who feared national discrimination that awaited them in the event of the Ukrainization of the Kuban, opposed the Ukrainophile tendency of the Black Sea people. This confrontation within the Kuban institutions of power prevented the leadership of the AFSR from pursuing its line, both in the military and in political relations. The aggravated situation at the front, as well as the intensified anti-Denikin propaganda on the part of the Black Sea part of the Rada, forced General Denikin to take decisive measures on the issue of relations with the Kuban. And here, the agreement concluded by the Kuban Parisian delegation with representatives of the Mountainous Republic came in handy. The latter was at war with the Terek Cossack army, which was patronized by the command of the All-Union Socialist Republic. Thus, the agreement concluded between the Kuban and the Mountainous Republic could be considered as directed against the main command of the All-Union Socialist Republic. On this basis, on November 7, 1919, General Denikin orders the immediate trial of all persons who signed this agreement. One of the members of the Parisian delegation F.I. Kulabukhov was hanged. The remaining members of the delegation, fearing reprisals, did not return to the Kuban. Taking advantage of the dissatisfaction of the Kuban Rada, several of its members (almost all of the Black Sea people), by order of General Wrangel, were brought to court-martial. The army ataman and the government did not dare, and most likely did not want to, defend the Kuban parliament, which, yielding to force, was forced to make some changes to the Kuban constitution. The essence of the constitutional changes was the abolition of the legislative Rada, the functions of which were transferred to the Regional Rada, as well as the strengthening of the power of the Army Ataman and the government, ready to make concessions to the command of the All-Union Socialist League. It was also stated that "the Kuban region thinks of itself as inextricably linked with the United, Great, Free Russia."

However, the struggle for power between the leadership of the Kuban and the All-Union Socialist Revolutionary Federation went on with varying degrees of success. Less than two months have passed since the Regional Rada restored the legislative Rada and canceled virtually all the concessions wrested from it. One of the results of this struggle was the abandonment of the front by the Kuban Cossacks. So, if at the end of 1918 the Kubans made up 68.75% of all the AFSR, by the beginning of 1920 they were no more than 10%,27 which, naturally, could not but affect the combat capability of Denikin's army. Thus, the confrontation between the Cossacks (and especially the Kuban separatists) and the volunteers became one of the reasons for the failure of the anti-Bolshevik movement in the Don and Kuban.

Analyzing the processes that took place in the anti-Bolshevik camp, one can agree with H.M. Ibrahimbeyli, who cites the following reasons for the weakening and, ultimately, the defeat of the VSYUR: “predatory methods of supplying the army, forcible mobilization of the population, corruption in the rear, squabbling between the highest command staff and the caste division of the army into volunteers, Donets, Kuban”.

5. The result of the civil war in the Don and Kuban

The result of the Civil War in the North Caucasus (Don and Kuban) was the Novorossiysk evacuation and surrender of the Cossack units on the Black Sea coast of the Caucasus to the Red Army. Both of these events, on the one hand, were the result of contradictions between the Cossack authorities and the command of the All-Union Socialist Revolutionary Federation, and on the other hand, one of the reasons for the deepening of these contradictions in the Crimea.

The contradictions between the command of the Don Army and the volunteers led to the fact that when the question of evacuation arose, the latter, having taken control of it, seized most of the ships and, in fact, abandoned the Don people to their fate. Almost all the rear establishments of Denikin's army and the Volunteer Corps in full force with weapons and ammunition were taken out of Novorossiysk. At the same time, most of the Don Army, which constituted the vast majority (after the departure of the Kubans) of the All-Union Socialist Republic, was left on the shore. It must be remembered that the civilian population of the Don retreated to the Kuban along with the Cossacks. Only a few of them managed to leave for the Crimea. Terrible in their savagery, the tragic scenes of the Novorossiysk evacuation are captured in many of the memoirs of its participants. In total, in the Novorossiysk region, Soviet troops captured about 22,000 people.29 Of these, at least 8,000 Don troops and about 10,000 civilian refugees from the Don.

The 4th Donskoy (former Mammoth) Corps (about 18,000 combatant Donets), with two brigades of the 2nd Don Corps that joined it, was cut off from the Novorossiysk direction and forced to move together with the corps of the Kuban Army on Tuapse, and then to the Georgian border.30 The position of the Kuban and Donets, retreating to Tuapse and further to the Georgian border, was as follows. An insignificant part of the Don people on March 19 was evacuated to the Crimea from Tuapse. On May 1, 1920, about 5 thousand Donets and 1.5-2 thousand Kubans (“wolves” A.G. Shkuro) were taken from the Adler region to the Crimean peninsula. Two days later, in the area of the New Town, virtually all the Cossacks of the IV Don Corps were taken out on English destroyers, with the exception of the 14th and 9th Don brigades, which could not break through to the loading site due to the flow of surrendering units of the Kuban army. Thus, from the strip from Tuapse to Gagra, at least 10,000 combatant bottoms were taken to the Crimea.

Despite Georgia's refusal to allow White Guard units and refugees into its territory, an insignificant part of the Don, together with the Kuban, crossed the Georgian border. Considering that a certain number of Donets were dispersed in the Kuban mountains and villages, the data of the Kuban Military Government, which noted the surrender of about 15,000 Donets to the Bolsheviks, should be recognized as correct. Apparently, most of the Don people (about 8-9000 people) who were captured were from the convoy of the Don corps or civilian refugees.

Of the 40-45 thousandth Kuban army, at least 25-30,000 people surrendered. Most of the Cossacks were disarmed on May 1-2, 1920 in the Sochi region. About 1,500 Kubans crossed over to Georgia. Considering that about 2,000 Kuban Cossacks were transported to the Crimea from the Black Sea coast (not counting a small part of the combined detachment under the Volunteer Corps), we can conclude that more than 10,000 Kuban went to the mountains: either to the “greens” to further fight against Bolsheviks, or to their native villages.

Thus, by the summer of 1920, there were more than 20,000 Don people and about 3-4,000 Kuban people on the Crimean peninsula. Subsequently, most of the Kuban and Donets, who surrendered on the Black Sea coast, and who escaped repression by the Bolsheviks, were sent to the Polish front to “redeem themselves with blood”. During the war with Poland, many of them went over to the side of the Poles and, subsequently, either moved to the Crimea to P.N. Wrangel, or were interned in Poland and Germany. Part of the Kuban came to Wrangel as a result of the defeat of the "Renaissance Army" of General M.A. Kostikov in the Kuban. After the unsuccessful landing of General S.G. Laying from the territory of the Kuban, 12,000 Kuban people crossed to the Crimea. In total, by November 1920, there were about 30 thousand Donets and at least 20 thousand Kuban people on the Crimean peninsula.

As for the relationship between the Cossacks and the white command, in the Crimea they acquired a completely different shade, becoming more rigid and uncompromising (not counting a number of tactical concessions) on the part of General Wrangel. First of all, this was due to the fact that the Crimean peninsula was not a Cossack territory, and, consequently, one of the factors that strengthened the influence of the Cossacks disappeared.

At the same time, one cannot agree with A.A. Gordeev, who argued that "the command of the Volunteer Army was relieved of the need to reckon with the governments of the Don, Kuban and Terek." This was expressed, in particular, in the reorganization of the Military Council. If earlier it was dominated by the Don people, now out of the 20 people of the Military Council, only 3 were Don generals. Further, “Wrangel continues, begun by Alekseev, Kornilov and Denikin, the work of subordinating to himself all the counter-revolutionary currents in the south of Russia, but not by subjugating the political tops of these currents, but, on the contrary, by eliminating these tops.”35 In particular, he was dismissed from service and the commander of the Don Army, General V.I., was sent abroad. Sidorin. An interesting fact is that he was dismissed "by agreement with the Don Ataman."

In turn, the Cossacks finally lost faith in the possibility of liberating Russia from the power of the Bolsheviks, and the leaders of the Cossacks could not help but feel the precariousness of their position in isolation from the Cossack regions. All this ultimately led to the appeal of the atamans of the Don and Kuban to the governments of England and France with a request to mediate in resolving the military conflict between Soviet Russia and the white governments of the Cossack territories and to recognize the independence of the latter. True, as the ataman of the All-Great Don Army A.P. assured. Bogaevsky, he did not even have in his mind a separate (from the Don side) peace with the Bolsheviks. However, Wrangel, alarmed by the possibility of being left alone with the Red Army, forced the Cossack elite to sign an agreement on April 15, 1920, and on July 22 of the same year to conclude an agreement on a Cossack union under his leadership. It recognized the full military leadership of Wrangel, including Cossack troops. In addition, the Cossack chieftains pledged to conduct all external relations only with the permission and through the intermediary of the Supreme Commander of the Russian Army. In exchange for the subjugation of the Cossack elite, Wrangel promised the chieftains complete autonomy and independence in relation to the internal civil structure.

Wrangel's agreement with the Cossack chieftains was used by the opposition forces, which subjected him to sharp criticism. In parallel, the Presidium of the Kuban Regional Rada declared the agreement invalid. At the same time, members of the presidium referred to the fact that the agreement did not have the signature of the chairman of the regional Rada. However, this demarche on the part of the Kuban did not prevent Wrangel on August 4, 1920 from declaring an alliance he had concluded with the Cossacks “for common struggle against the Bolsheviks.

In general, the promise of the independence of the Cossack lands helped Wrangel, on the one hand, to achieve submission from the Cossack elite, and on the other hand, to keep the confidence of the Cossacks. The subordination of the Cossacks is also evidenced by the fact that neither the Don nor the Kuban army any longer existed in the Crimea. The first was reorganized into the Don Cossack Corps, the commander of which was appointed a supporter of Wrangel, General F.F. Abramov. The Kuban brigade was formed from the Kubans. All these units were part of one army, which was emphatically called "Russian".

By November 1920, the Cossacks who were on the Crimean Peninsula, along with the entire Russian army, faced a choice: surrender to the mercy of the Bolsheviks or leave the inhospitable island and go to a foreign land with the hope of a speedy return to their native lands.

We must pay tribute to Wrangel: the withdrawal of the 150,000th mass of refugees from the Crimea under the pressure of the Red Army was more organized than the Novorossiysk evacuation. This was also facilitated objective reasons. Firstly, there were more ports in Crimea than on the Black Sea coast, which made it possible to reduce the crowd, and, consequently, relieve tension and panic. Secondly, ships with a supply of fuel and food were prepared in advance. Thirdly, long before the Crimean disaster, an evacuation plan had already been drawn up, which made it possible to organize loading without too much fuss. Fourthly, the merging of parts of the Russian army into a single combat organism, the removal of tension in relations between the leaders of the Cossacks and the leadership of the All-Union Socialist Revolutionary Federation, which was characteristic of the Denikin period of the struggle, made it possible to avoid the excitement and enmity that accompanied the Novorossiysk evacuation. The uniform distribution of ports of loading between the Donets, Kuban and other parts of the army also contributed to the relatively calm environment during evacuation.

However, one should not idealize the evacuation, as some of Wrangel's supporters did in their memoirs. There was everything in Crimea: robberies, fires, vanity, and panic. But all this manifested itself to a much lesser extent than in Novorossiysk and did not prevent everyone who wanted to leave to dive. Most of the Don and Kuban were forced to bear the heavy burden of an emigrant. No less difficult was the position of a significant part of the Cossacks who remained in their native lands. As for the further political searches of the Don and Kuban Cossacks, they continued in exile (as well as the confrontation with Wrangel). However, this is a topic for a separate study.

Bibliography

1 Ladokha G. Essays on civil struggle in the Kuban. Krasnodar, 1923. S. 23.

2 Kakurin N.E. How did the revolution fight? M., 1990. T. 1. S. 164.

3 Pokrovsky G. Denikin. Year of Politics and Economics in the Kuban (1918-1919). Kharkov, 1926. S. 15.

4 Denikin A.I. Campaign and death of General Kornilov // Gul R.B. Ice hike. Denikin A.I. Campaign and death of General Kornilov. Budberg A. Diary 1918-1919. M., 1990. S. 108.

5 Bogaevsky A.P. 1918 // White business: Ice campaign. M., 1993. S. 27, 39.

6 Zaitsev A.A. Memoir literature as a source for studying the social psychology of the Cossacks during the Civil War // Cossacks in revolutions and civil war. Cherkesok, 1988. S. 82.

7 Kakurin N.E. Decree. op. T. 1. S. 183.

8 Budyonny S.M. Distance traveled. M., 1958. Book. 1. S. 43-44.

9 Denikin A.I. White movement and the struggle of the Volunteer Army // White business: Don and the Volunteer Army. M., 1992. S. 255.

10 Ordzhonikidze G.K. Articles and speeches. M., 1956. v. 1. S. 71.

11 Denikin A.G. Campaign and death of General Kornilov... S. 142.

12 Bogaevsky A.P. Decree. op. S. 75.

13 Denikin A.I. The struggle of General Kornilov ... S. 164.

14 State Archive Krasnodar Territory (GAKK). F. R-106. Op. 1. D. 37. L. 141-142.

15 Lekhovich D.V. White versus red. The fate of General Anton Denikin. M., 1992. S. 202.

16 Gordeev A.A. History of the Cossacks. M., 1993. S. 225.

17 Krasnov P.N. The All-Great Don Army //White Cause: Don and the Volunteer Army. M., 1992. S. 32.

18 Op. by: Ibrahimbeyli H.M. Criticism of modern bourgeois historiography of the Cossacks in the revolution and civil war // Cossacks in revolutions and civil war. Cherkesok, 1988. S. 66. .

19 Skobtsov D.E. Drama of Kuban //Denikin. Yudenich. Wrangel: memoirs. M.-L., 1927. S. 137--138.

20 Acceleration I. Kuban action // Struggle of classes. 1936. No. 1. S. 75.

21 Tragedy of the Cossacks. Paris, 1938. Part IV. pp. 432, 497.

22 Venkov A.V. Wrangel and the Cossacks // Revival of the Cossacks: history and modernity. Novocherkassk, 1994, p. 89.

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Landing operation of General S. G. Ulagai

In March 1920, white troops fled from Yekaterinodar. The last echoes of the Civil War in the Kuban were heard in August 1920, when the Whites landed troops on Taman and near Novorossiysk.

Expeditionary Airborne Corps under the command of Lieutenant General S.G. Ulagaya began preparing and forming units for the landing on the Taman Peninsula in June 1920. The task of the landing party was to seize a bridgehead on the Taman Peninsula and develop an offensive in the direction of Yekaterinodar, with the aim of raising the Kuban Cossacks and underground counter-revolutionary detachments in the Kuban and the North Caucasus to fight the Soviets.

In August 1920, the landing of General Ulagay began on the Taman Peninsula. Despite the fact that the Soviet command was very well informed about the plans, timing and size of the proposed landing on the Taman Peninsula and concentrated large forces here, the troops of General Ulagay achieved some success: they occupied the villages of Bryukhovetskaya, Timashevskaya, Starovelichkovskaya. But they failed to hold the conquered territories.

The Soviet troops stepped up the onslaught and the pace of the offensive along the entire front, struck landings on river boats at the rear of the troops of General Ulagay. In heavy fighting, the Red Army finally defeated the troops of General Ulagai on the Taman Peninsula. For the failure of the Taman landing operation, General Wrangel dismissed General Ulagay from the ranks of the Russian army.

Thus, already in November - December 1920, Soviet power was established on the territory of the Kuban and the Black Sea.

On January 9, 1919, in the area of the Holy Cross (now Budennovsk) - Mineralnye Vody - Kislovodsk, Denikin managed to dismember parts of the 11th Army into isolated groups. The management of the army finally went wrong (shortly before that, Army Commander Sorokin was also shot for arbitrariness). In a harsh winter, the main forces of the 11th Army retreated across the sandy steppes to Astrakhan. The 11th Army played its part in the civil war, pulling back a significant force of the Volunteer Army. The units under the command of: D. Zhloba, E. Kovtyukh, E. Voronov, I. Fedko, M. Demus, P. Zonenko, M. Kovalev, F. Shpak, I. Matveev, G. Baturin, M. Levandovsky , G. Mironenko and others. Denikin by January 1919 captured the entire Kuban, while in the fall of 1918 the Entente landed its troops in Odessa, Sevastopol, Novorossiysk and Transcaucasia. However, already in the spring of 1919, the Entente troops were withdrawn, but the assistance with money and weapons increased. In 1919, the war reached unprecedented proportions - the number of fronts increased to 6, and their length was up to 8 thousand kilometers. Denikin's volunteer army launched an offensive "On Moscow", which ended in failure. At the beginning of 1919, about 40 underground Bolshevik cells operated in the Kuban. The largest operated in Yekaterinodar - 200 people. The cell of S.A. Vorobyov was the most active - it blew up 19 wagons with ammunition at the Ekaterinodar-1 station. Also during the civil war, partisans were active in the Kuban. Detachments of partisans of the Kuban and the Black Sea in the summer of 1919 numbered about 15 thousand people. The main headquarters and the partisan army were led by M.T. Masliev. I will note the high activity of the so-called "greens", who were on their own, but often "played along" with the reds. On January 8, 1920, the Red Army liberated Rostov and entered the North Caucasus.

Armored trains in the Kuban To fight the partisans, 6 armored trains of the White Guards ran along the Novorossiysk-Ekaterinodar railway line: "To Moscow", "Rurik", "Eagle", "Officer", "Oleg" and "Ivan Kalita". The partisans of the "Thunder and Lightning" detachment of the village of Krymskaya derailed the armored train "Eagle". The Yeisk Committee of the RCP(b), headed by V. Norenko, created an armed shock group of port workers and railroad workers. Having won the Denikin garrison over to their side, the group organized an uprising on the night of February 4. The suppression of the uprising was abandoned by the White Guard punitive detachments, which broke into Yeysk on February 6 and started heavy street fighting. The rebels retreated across the ice of the Sea of Azov to Taganrog.

15. Question. Collectivization in the Kuban and decossackization

Between the Soviet state and the Russian Cossacks initially tense relations were established. The Bolsheviks, as true revolutionaries, even before they came to power in October 1917, got used to calling the Cossacks “buffers”, “satraps”, “support of the autocracy”. The apogee of the anti-Cossack policy of the Bolsheviks was the period of the civil war, when cruel measures were taken against the Cossacks, and one of the leaders of the ruling party, L.D. Trotsky called on his comrades-in-arms in the “red camp”: “Destroy as such, de-Cossack the Cossacks - that is our slogan! Remove stripes, forbid being called a Cossack, evict en masse to other regions. During the NEP, despite the normalization of relations between the Cossacks and Soviet power, the attitude towards “decossackization”, the dissolution of the Cossacks among the masses of the rural population remained (although due to the multidimensionality of the historical process, during the 1920s there were also cases of strengthening the positions of local Cossack communities at the village level, which allowed contemporaries to talk about “cossackization”). The anti-Cossack orientation of the Bolshevik policy also manifested itself during complete collectivization, when in the South of Russia the Don, Terek, Kuban Cossacks became the primary object of "dispossession", repressions, deportations. It was during the years of collectivization, according to a number of experts, that the tragic process of “decossackization” received its natural conclusion.

In the scientific literature, polar points of view have developed in relation to “decossackization”. So, S.A. Kislitsyn, who devoted a number of serious works to this topic, identifies four stages in the process of "decossackization": civil war (decossackization through the physical liquidation of representatives of the Cossack estate), the stage from 1921 to 1924. (pressure on the Cossacks, restriction of their rights), hidden decossackization 1925 - 1928. and, finally, “the stage of persecution of opposition-minded elements of the Cossacks by the methods of “dispossession”, the fight against “pests” and “saboteurs” of grain procurements and direct repressions against members of the “rebel organizations” of 1929-1939.

On the contrary, according to V.E. Shchetnev, collectivization in relation to the Cossack regions cannot be characterized as decossackization, because "by this time the Cossacks had lost a significant part of their class and ethnic characteristics" as a result of previous actions of the authorities. Collectivization can be called, believes V.E. Shchetnev, "finishing off" the Cossacks, but by no means the final stage of decossackization. Actually, E.N. wrote about the same thing. Oskolkov, pointing out that the attempts of the leaders of the CPSU (b) and the Soviet state in the early 1930s. to give their violent actions in the North Caucasian region an anti-Cossack character were doomed to failure in advance: “the failure of this line was that the Cossacks as an estate by the beginning of the 30s. was no longer there."

Within the framework of the above discussion, we fully share the position of those researchers who believe it is impossible to interpret collectivization as the final stage of “decossicization”. At the same time, in our opinion, this position needs a more serious substantiation, and in the course of attracting and analyzing specific historical materials, a number of provisions can be adjusted. For example, one can think about the extent to which the Cossacks were “finished off” during the “kolkhoz construction” in the villages and villages of the South of Russia during the 1930s. In the presented publication, we intend to document the hypothesis that collectivization was not the final stage of “decossackization”, despite all the anti-Cossack actions of the Soviet government (more precisely, the Stalinist regime) that took place in the late 1920s - 1930s.

Before proceeding to a detailed substantiation of our position, it is necessary to determine the semantic content of "decoscatization" as basic concept of this work, since it is precisely the features of the interpretation of this concept that ultimately anticipate certain author's judgments and hypotheses. What is the meaning of this concept? Historiographic analysis allows us to identify several approaches to the interpretation of "decossackization" and indicate several of its meanings that are different from each other.

According to one of the interpretations, “decossackization” is a process of eliminating the Cossacks as a special social group in Russian society, “the abolition of the essential features of the Cossacks as a military service class: almost lifelong military service, allotment of a land share for service, the abolition of equipment for the Cossack to serve for his account, the abolition of benefits to the Cossack, his equalization with the peasantry. Actually, this is the original meaning of “decossackization”, which arose simultaneously with the beginning of this process in the second half of the 19th century, when, with the genesis of capitalism, the Cossack communities began to gradually dissolve into other social strata (for example, by the beginning of the 20th century, about 8 thousand Don Cossacks worked in the factory industry and in transport). At this time, “decossackization” was an evolutionary process, a kind of response of the Cossacks to the changed socio-economic conditions, in which the privileges of their estate status no longer compensated for the costs and losses that accompanied the performance of duties. As rightly noted by V.P. Trut, "at that time no one even stuttered about any violent measures of influence on the Cossacks." In our opinion, such an interpretation of “decossackization” corresponds to historical reality.

According to another, more extended interpretation, "decossackization" was nothing more than "the process of destroying the Cossacks as a special social community." In this case, we are talking not only about the elimination of the Cossacks as an estate, but also in general about the elimination of the Cossacks as a social group that has (like any other social group) certain traditions, features of life, collective psychology, etc. , understood as the liquidation of the military service class, has more or less clear chronological boundaries (the second half of the 19th century - the 20s of the 20th century), then “decossackization” as the destruction of the “special social community” of the Cossacks can be extended and for pre-Soviet, and for the whole Soviet period time (because in this case, almost any anti-Cossack action can be summed up under "decossackization", no matter what government it is undertaken). The lack of specificity makes this definition of "scocking" inherently vulnerable.

Finally, according to another fairly common interpretation, “decossackization” (in the Soviet period) was “the elimination of the Cossacks as a socio-ethnographic community in general”, the elimination of “characteristic features, features, properties, signs of the Cossacks as a paramilitary estate, a layer of wealthy landowners and partly as a separate sub-ethnos”, “the transformation of the Cossacks into ordinary citizens”. This interpretation of “decossackization” is close to the one above, but concretizes it and seriously supplements it with an indication that in the Soviet period the authorities set themselves the goal of partially eliminating the Cossacks, not just as an estate and even a social community, but as a sub-ethnos. In other words, in this case we are talking about the intentions of the authorities to completely (or almost completely) dissolve the Cossacks with their special culture, psychology, etc. in the mass of the population of Soviet Russia.

So, there is no unity of approaches to understanding the essence and characteristic features of “decossackization” (as a process and as a policy) among specialists. Naturally, the difference in approaches to the interpretation of "decossackization" directly affects the establishment of the chronological boundaries of this historical phenomenon. Above, we have already cited the statements of researchers that “decossackization”, if it is understood as the elimination of the special class status of the Cossacks, ended in the 1920s, when the Soviet authorities denied autonomy to the Cossacks and equalized their rights with the peasants. Consequently, within the framework of such a position, collectivization could not represent the final stage of "decossackization", since the Cossacks as a military service class by the beginning of the 1930s. no longer existed (despite the fact that in economic and property terms, the Cossacks of the South of Russia in the pre-collective farm period nevertheless stood out from the mass of peasants).

In contrast to this interpretation, researchers who define “decossackization” as the elimination of the Cossacks either as a “special social community” or as a “socio-ethnographic community”, sub-ethnos, have the right to expand the chronological boundaries of this process (politics). Indeed, in this case, almost all the anti-Cossack measures of the Bolsheviks, from mass repressions to the ban on wearing pants with stripes, can be attributed to the policy of “decossackization”, because, ultimately, they aimed to eliminate the Cossacks as such. From these positions, it is quite possible to characterize collectivization as the final stage of “decossackization”.

In our opinion, the policy of “decossackization” in the North Caucasian region ended in the 1920s. equalization of the rights of Cossacks and non-residents. The Cossacks as an estate disappeared after the transformations of the 1920s, although the Cossacks, as a special ethno-social group, to a certain extent retained their positions (both economic and social) in the South of Russia by the time the NEP was broken. In particular, despite the “average” of the Russian village in the 1920s. (and, despite the equalizing land redistribution of the early 1920s), the Cossacks still remained more prosperous than most of the peasants around them. According to the fair remark of N.A. Tokareva, in relation to the conditions of the Don and the North Caucasus, the criteria for delimiting peasant and kulak farms did not work. If, on average, in Russia, a farm without sowing or with a crop of up to 4 acres was considered poor, then on the Don in the 1920s. The allotment of an average Cossack family was 12-15 acres. In addition, under the NEP, the Cossacks continued to maintain a strong position in the countryside. The Cossacks did not lose their culture, customs, they were aware of their commonality and dissimilarity to local peasants.

Nevertheless, the deprivation of the Cossacks of a special social and legal status, estate privileges contributed to the normalization of their relations with non-residents, the merging of the peasant and Cossack populations. In any case, in the late 20's. such trends were notable. According to the members of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, in the Kuban by the end of the 20s. 20th century one could talk about "weakening, in general, thanks to the policy of the Soviet government, class strife between the Cossacks and non-residents." Part of the Cossacks, even before the deployment of forced collectivization, entered the collective farms. Already in 1928, according to a survey of 102 collective farms of the North Caucasus Territory, in the Kuban district, among the members of these collective farms, Cossacks accounted for 40.1%, in the Terek district - 45.6%, in the Don district - 17.7%. Moreover, in the survey materials it was noted that “analysis of data on various forms[collective farms] shows that the Cossacks in this case (that is, included in the collective farms - ed.) is no different from other cities.

Taking into account the socio-political results of the NEP, during collectivization there was already no one to “talk about”. It could no longer be about the elimination of the Cossacks as an estate. But even if we define “decossackization” as a policy of eliminating Cossack communities in general (and not only as a policy of eliminating estate remnants), then in this case, the analysis of concrete historical materials does not allow either to identify collectivization and “decossackization”, or to consider the process of “collective-farm construction "the final crushing blow to the Cossack nature.

Of course, there is a mass of materials that allow us to assert that within the framework of collectivization, anti-Cossack actions were voluntarily or involuntarily undertaken, aimed at eliminating the Cossack communities, involving the Cossacks in collective farms and dissolving them in the faceless mass of collective farmers (and those who persisted were expected to be evicted from their native villages or in general the North -Caucasian region, or simply physical destruction). “Belonging to the Cossacks, participation in the years of the civil war on the side of the Whites could serve as a basis for enrolling the middle peasants, who rejected collectivization, into the category of kulaks,” V.V. rightly points out. Gatashov. It is obvious that during the "collective farm construction" in the North Caucasus region (since 1934 in the Azov-Chernomorsky and North Caucasian regions), the Cossacks suffered no less seriously than the peasantry, and often on the ground took the brunt of the Stalinist repressive machine.

Indeed, in the Cossack regions, collectivization in its series of social conflicts strongly resembled the times of the civil war. The fact is that the civil war (if we talk about public consciousness) did not end during the NEP period; distrustful and often hostile attitude towards the Cossacks on the part of the poor, rural outcasts, non-residents, radical Bolsheviks persisted. V.S. In this regard, Sidorov subtly noted that "the military-communist consciousness succumbed under the efforts of the New Economic Policy, but only like a compressed spring." As the chairman of the central Cossack commission S.I. Syrtsov at the April plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in 1925, “the Cossacks perceived the victory of Soviet power as a victory for non-residents, and non-residents perceived a change in the situation in the sense that the Cossack power was over, that now the power of non-residents and in many places began to show a tendency put the Cossacks in such a powerless position, in which in the recent past there was the non-resident population itself. If during the time of the NEP, with such sentiments, the authorities, preoccupied with the search for civil peace, tried to fight, then during the period of collectivization they became widespread and were actually approved by the country's leadership.

As a result, from the end of the 1920s. - in the first half of the 1930s. in the North Caucasus region, in connection with the deployment of complete collectivization, de facto anti-Cossack measures followed. Already on January 8, 1930, at the bureau of the North Caucasian Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, in a draft special resolution on collectivization and dispossession, among the “kulaks” subject to administrative eviction from the region, first of all, were named “Cossack ideologists and authorities”, “former whites officers”, “punishers”, “repatriates”, “former white-and-green bandits with sons-officers in exile”, etc. thousand farms) suffered a lot of Cossacks, because, as already noted, their farms in terms of their economic indicators often surpassed the farms of the peasants. In addition, it was the wealthy Cossacks (as well as wealthy peasants) and the Cossack intelligentsia, including the military, who were most socially and politically active and were most dangerous for "collective farm construction."

The information reports and indictments of the OGPU almost always emphasize the belonging of certain "counter-revolutionaries" to the Cossack estate. Moreover, often the documents of the OGPU are drawn up in such a way that the very fact that the accused or suspect belongs to a Cossack corporation is an accusation or proof of guilt (that is, the Cossacks were again considered the class of “reactionaries”, the most dangerous for the “cause of socialism”). An even more serious accusation for a Cossack who came to the attention of the OGPU was his belonging to the number of re-emigrants, that is, to the number of Cossacks who returned to their homeland from abroad in the 1920s. under the amnesty granted by the Soviet authorities. Re-emigrant Cossacks (or, as the compilers of the OGPU reports often wrote, “repatriates”) were almost automatically considered “enemies”, because they once had the misfortune to hide in other countries from the advancing Red Army (and then had even greater misfortune to return to Motherland, which turned out to be a stepmother). The logic here is simple: if he emigrated, he felt guilty about himself, which means that he was a real enemy of the Soviet government, and therefore could again become its enemy. The fact that in this situation the Cossacks, according to the figurative expression of A.I. Kozlov, "hung dead dogs" (that is, they recalled past sins, in the absence of illegal acts in the present), the OGPU did not bother at all.

The most famous and large-scale of the anti-Cossack actions of the period of collectivization is carried out in late 1932 - early 1933. deportation of the population of a number of “black-dashed” villages of the North Caucasus Territory (residents of the South of Russia sometimes called these villages “black-dashed”; such a Ukrainized version of the name is found in the sources). According to E.N. Oskolkov, who for the first time thoroughly studied this tragic page in the history of the Cossacks and the peasantry of the South of Russia, in total, more than 61.6 thousand inhabitants of the "Chernodosochny" villages were deported. The villages of Poltavskaya, Medvedovskaya, Urupskaya (Armavir district) suffered the most: out of 47.5 thousand of their inhabitants, 45.6 thousand were evicted. Taking into account the prevalence of the Cossacks in the population of these villages, E.N. Oskolkov reasonably believed "that the leadership of the party and the state sought to give their violent actions in the North Caucasus region an anti-Cossack character."

It is no coincidence that before the deportation, the leaders of the ruling party appealed to the experience of the civil war and deliberately focused on the ideological and political continuity of this action with the policy of “decossackization”. I recall the well-known statement of L.M. Kaganovich, who actually led the deportation: “... it is necessary that all Kuban Cossacks know how in 21 the Terek Cossacks were resettled, who resisted Soviet power. So it is now - we can’t have the Kuban lands, the golden lands, so that they are not sown, but clogged, so that they do not care about them, so that they are not considered ... we will resettle you.

It is characteristic that even after the eviction of the inhabitants of the “Chernodosochny” villages, the local population, especially the Cossacks, expected a repetition of the deportations and therefore willingly trusted the numerous rumors that were spreading. So, when in May 1934 on the collective farm "Socialist Agriculture" of the Kushchevsky District of the Azov-Chernomorsky Territory there was suddenly talk about the eviction of all Cossacks to the North, the population reacted immediately. Employees of the OGPU reported that “individual collective farmers”, on the wave of rumors about eviction, were preparing “to leave the village, selling property, preparing crackers and other products for the road, up to digging up newly planted potatoes.” This means that not only representatives of the authorities, but also local residents, regarded the deportations not only as episodic random actions, but as a return to the systematic policy of “decossackization”.

Following the deportation of the residents of the "Chernodosochny" villages, the actions of the central and regional leadership to resettle new collective farmers from other regions of the country, often from among the demobilized Red Army soldiers, followed. According to E.N. Oskolkov, by mid-February 1933, approximately 50,000 peasant households were resettled in place of the deported Cossacks, including about 20,000 Red Army peasants with their families. The settlers were mainly residents of other regions of the country. As of November 9, 1933, most of the Red Army soldiers (about 60 echelons) arrived from the northern, northwestern and northeastern military districts: Leningrad, Moscow, Belorussian, etc. Since the Kuban suffered the most during the deportations, the main the flow of immigrants was sent here, to the villages of Armavir, Kanevsky, Slavyansky, Staro-Minsky, Tikhoretsky, Ust-Labinsky and other regions (in total, the sources indicate 17 Kuban regions where the Red Army men were sent). A small part of the settlers settled in the regions of Stavropol (Blagodarnensky, Vorontsovo-Aleksandrovsky, etc.) and the Don (Taganrog, Kamensky, etc.). By April 10, 1934, there were about 48.2 thousand Red Army settlers and members of their families in the Azov-Black Sea Territory (mainly in the Kuban), and only 572 people in the North Caucasian Territory. The deportation of the inhabitants of the “Chernodosochny” villages (most of them were Cossacks) and the resettlement of Red Army soldiers in their place (mainly from the western and central regions of the USSR) inevitably resurrected typical civil war scenarios in social memory, when, for example, A. Frenkel called for the eviction of the Cossacks from Don and populate the Region of the Don Army with peasants and workers (“labour element”).

Subjected to economic and administrative pressure, political repression, the Cossacks in the South of Russia tried to protect their interests and entered into a struggle with the authorities. In May 1929, in the Rodnikovsky farm of the Armavir region of the North Caucasus region, a middle Cossack said to the villagers: “This is the moment when the Cossacks should rise. If the Cossacks had risen now, then in two months they would have gone through all of Russia, not like in 1918, when no one knew what kind of Soviet power. The Cossack of the Maikop district then admitted to his acquaintances: “I can’t wait for the war, then I would have amused myself. To kill all the communists and save the people from torment.

In the North Caucasian region, during collectivization, the OGPU eliminated a number of "counter-revolutionary" "organizations" and "groups", which consisted mainly of Cossacks. So, in February 1930, in the Armavir district, OGPU officers arrested 47 people from an organization called “samzak” - “self-defense of the Cossacks” (headed by a remigrant Malakhov). In July 1930, a secret organization was liquidated in the Veshensky district under the leadership of the former Yesaul A.S. Senin (the prototype of Yesaul Polovtsev from Virgin Soil Upturned), which had its own cells in settlements even in adjacent areas, with a total of 98 participants. In March - April 1933, the OGPU bodies revealed the organization of the former military foreman V.V. Semernikov, based in the city of Shakhty and adjacent villages, and prosecuted 115 people.

Ruined and “dispossessed” Cossacks, often expelled, but who fled from exile to their native lands, joined the criminal communities (“gangs”), the very process of formation of which is a direct consequence of collectivization (which destabilized the situation in the village). Moreover, according to a number of reports, some Cossacks radically changed the nature of the activities of such communities. If the "gangs" were usually engaged in robberies and robberies, then under the influence of the Cossacks they sometimes switched to terror against representatives of the Soviet authorities and activists. So, at the end of March 1934, in the area of the village of Ivanovskaya in the Kuban, a “gang” of I.S. Kerman (“26 years old, Cossack of Ivanovskaya station, individual peasant, without fixed occupation, convicted in 1929 for the murder of an activist, escaped from exile”). The activities of this group (consisting of 8 people, "mostly fugitives from exile") "manifested themselves in systematic robberies, thefts and terrorist attacks against the local Soviet party activists." It is curious that, according to the report of the OGPU employees, Kerman's "gang" "in some cases, when robbing collective farmers, used asphyxiants made in a handicraft way from sulfur" (apparently, someone from its composition was related to chemistry).

After the resettlement of the demobilized Red Army soldiers to the “Chernodosochny” villages, a confrontation began between them and the local Cossacks (reminiscent of the times of the civil war), often provoked by the actions of the authorities and the settlers themselves. The authorities showed increased concern for the Red Army men (their social support in the Cossack villages) and opposed their mixing with the local population, ordering the creation of separate collective farms and brigades from them and warning that "the organization of mixed brigades should in no case be allowed." Some settlers allowed themselves openly hostile statements: “We will achieve that there will be no Cossack spirit here either. All Cossacks will be sent out of here. First individual farmers, and then collective farmers. Naturally, the locals perceived the Red Army as invaders who came with the goal of finally surviving (destroying, evicting) the surviving Cossacks.

There is a lot of evidence of threats to the Red Army by local Cossacks, of attempts to rob their houses, pilfer property, sometimes ending in injuries or even killings of the Red Army and their families. Evidence of premeditated murders (or attempted murders) and beatings of Red Army soldiers was recorded, and these excesses were sometimes accompanied by shouts of "beat the Katsaps, why did they come here in large numbers." In a number of districts and villages of the Kuban (Korenovsky, Staro-Minsk, etc.), vigilant OGPU officers identified and liquidated "counter-revolutionary groups" that set as their "task the decomposition and removal of Red Army settlers from the village" and for this purpose "systematically processed the Red Army soldiers, causing them to flee." In particular, at the beginning of 1934, in the village of Novo-Myshastovskaya, Krasnodar District, Azov-Chernomorsky Territory, a group of 13 individual Cossacks (“former kulaks, former White Guards”), led by the “former kulak” Klinov, was liquidated. The grouping aimed at the moral decay of the settlers with their subsequent removal from the village. In addition, as the OGPU agents claimed, Klinovoy created a terrorist group and supplied it with weapons (sawed-off shotguns). The group was supposed to beat and kill the IDP activists "so that they would remember the Kuban for a long time."

Representatives of the grassroots Soviet apparatus and employees of various organizations of the Kuban (also often coming from among the Cossacks) were not free from open hostility towards unwanted migrants. They allowed themselves rude attacks and statements against the settlers (up to prohibitions to draw water from the village wells). Moreover, the local police and the prosecutor's office looked at these offenses with indifference, which allows us to speak of their solidarity with those who opposed the settlers.

The above materials show that in relation to the Cossacks in the South of Russia, collectivization really resurrected social stereotypes and scenarios from the time of the civil war. All this gives researchers grounds to interpret the process of "collective-farm construction" as the final stage of "decossackization", as "hidden decossackization".

However, despite these (rather numerous) examples, collectivization, in our opinion, cannot be characterized as the time of completion of the “decossicization”. Moreover, in this case, it is not so important what content we give to the term "decossackization". Are we talking about decossackization as the elimination of estate remnants, or as the destruction of a special social community of the Cossacks, or as the elimination of the socio-ethnographic characteristics of the Cossacks (the elimination of the Cossacks as a sub-ethnos).

First of all, it should be noted that there is not a single document where one of the objectives of the collectivization policy would be proclaimed the elimination of the Cossacks as a social group or sub-ethnos. On the other hand, the resolution of the Bureau of the North Caucasian Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks “On work among the Cossack population of the North Caucasus” dated April 11, 1930, is widely known, which stated that “non-Bolshevik and most harmful is the mood among a part of local workers of a biased, distrustful attitude towards the Cossack only because part of the Cossacks was deceived by the generals and kulaks, participating in the white armies. Here it was also proposed to strengthen the representation of Cossacks in the composition of the collective farm leadership in the Cossack districts of the region, bringing their share to at least 50%. Of course, these were only words (often, indeed, at odds with deeds), and this document can be considered a simple declaration. However, the implementation of this decree still contributed to the normalization of the situation in the Cossack regions and led to a sharp increase in the number of Cossacks in local councils.

The most important thing is that today we have archival documents (which also dealt with the Cossacks), which were accepted by the party leadership of the North Caucasus region by no means for publication, but, as they say, “for a narrow circle of people” and were in the nature of tough instructions. We are talking, in particular, about a letter of instruction signed by the First Secretary of the Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of the North Caucasus Territory B.P. Sheboldaev, sent to individual district committees on January 18, 1931. The letter ordered the eviction of 9,000 kulak households "in order to cleanse the coastal-flooded and forest-mountainous strip of the Kuban and the Black Sea." Moreover, Sheboldaev warned specific performers that "it is necessary to observe a strict class approach in the selection of farms to be evicted, and in particular, a cautious attitude towards the middle peasant, a former ordinary participant in the white movement, is necessary." The letter further stated that " Special attention The district party organizations should focus on involving in the discussion of the lists of [the evicted] the masses of Cossack collective farmers, the poor and the middle peasants.”

Within the framework of the problem we have raised, one of the paragraphs of the letter deserves special attention, where it is emphasized: “with special care it is necessary to achieve complete clearance of these areas from the kulak-White Guard element from the so-called out-of-town population, which is especially important in connection with the presence of attempts on the part of class-hostile elements to interpret the Party's slogan on the elimination of the kulaks as "liquidation of the Cossacks", and measures to evict the kulaks as a measure of decossackization. As you can see, not only Cossacks, but also non-residents were to be evicted if they posed a danger to the collective farms and the Soviet government.

It is important that the archival file contains both a draft letter with amendments personally made by Sheboldaev and its final version. So, Sheboldaev added to the paragraph quoted above the words "and measures to evict the kulaks, as a measure of decossackization." Apparently, the secretary of the regional committee of the ruling party had information about the interpretation of the “dispossession” by the population as persecution of the Cossacks and wanted to get the secretaries of the district committees and employees of the OGPU to eliminate all rumors and make it clear to the population that we are not talking about decossackization.

Since this letter is classified as "strictly secret" and was intended "for insiders", it can be safely stated that its content is not a declaration, but the real intentions of the authorities. This instructive letter clearly proves that the regional authorities of the North Caucasian region were guided in their policy towards the Cossacks not by estates, but by class principles. The regional leadership did not pursue a policy of “decossackization”, did not set out to liquidate the Cossack communities (the exception is the deportation of the inhabitants of the “chernodosochny villages; however, this action was carried out with the support and under pressure from Moscow and remained isolated). But, nevertheless, all the "class-hostile", "counter-revolutionary-minded" Cossacks, who posed a danger to the authorities, were subjected to repression (along with the same categories of the peasant, non-resident population, which is clearly stated in the letter).

Another thing is that among the Cossacks, compared with non-residents, there were more “prosperous” and “counter-revolutionaries”, that historically the Cossacks were regarded by the Bolsheviks as opponents of the Soviet regime (and therefore the belonging of the “kulaks” to the Cossacks or Cossack repatriates in the eyes of the Stalinist regime aggravated their guilt) . And on the ground, specific performers who remembered the times of the civil war often saw potential counter-revolutionaries in the Cossacks and acted accordingly in relation to them. But, unlike during the civil war, during the period of collectivization, such anti-Cossack actions, although encouraged by the authorities, were still not the implementation of a clear, well-thought-out policy of genocide of the Cossacks.

Resistance to the policy of collectivization was also not subdivided in most cases into "peasant" or "Cossack" resistance. Both the Cossacks and the peasants equally suffered from collectivization and jointly opposed the forcible creation of collective farms, grain procurements, and "dispossession". A striking example in this case is the activities of the "Union of Grain Growers", which arose on the basis of the publishing house of the journal "The Way of the North Caucasian Grain Grower" and was headed, according to the OGPU, by the head of the publishing house Kravchenko, "an active participant in the civil war on the side of the Soviet power." The organization had its own charter, program and issued a manifesto, where it was about protecting the interests of grain growers. Moreover, in the manifesto, the "Union of Grain Growers" was called "a peasant-Cossack political party to protect the interests of the working peasantry, Cossacks and workers." The anti-Cossack actions of the government in the early 1930s, aimed at splitting the peasant-Cossack camp of opponents of collectivization, separating the Cossacks, strengthening class enmity, were not successful. According to the fair remark of E.N. Oskolkov, the Stalinist regime failed to "galvanize class strife." The failure of such attempts can only be explained by the fact that during the years of NEP, the Cossacks really ceased to exist as an estate.

At the same time, taking into account new data, it seems possible to talk about the rallying of the Cossacks during the period of collectivization in response to the actions of the authorities. Mentioned by A.V. Baranov reports on clashes between Cossacks and non-residents in the late 1920s. can be interpreted not only as a conflict of the poor and rural outcasts with the wealthy sections of the village, but also as evidence of the revival of Cossack "nationalism".

In the 1930s the processes of ethno-cultural consolidation of the Cossacks were spurred on by inadequate political and administrative pressure from the authorities. The most notable example in this case is the position of the Kuban Cossacks (including those who were on collective farms) and the indigenous non-residents, which they took in relation to the settlers who arrived instead of the evicted residents of the “Chernodosochny” villages and the repressed “kulaks”. This topic deserves a separate study, but even now, based on the reports of the OGPU, we can state the fact that the Kuban Cossacks clearly separated themselves from the newcomers - "Muscovites", "Katsaps". The Cossacks of the village of Novo-Derevyankovskaya directly declared to the Red Army men: “there is no place for lapotniks here, we were and are Cossacks"(our italics - ed.) (considering that the Red Army soldiers in the Kuban were called "bast shoes", the political department of the Leningrad MTS did them a truly disservice by purchasing "several thousand bast shoes" for them!). So collectivization to some extent resurrected and strengthened the processes of consolidation somewhat weakened during the years of NEP in the local communities of the Don, Kuban, Terek Cossacks. True, in these times the Cossacks did not act as an estate, they positioned themselves as a special community (“the people”) as part of the rural population, and later as part of the collective farm peasantry (“collective farm Cossacks”).

Finally, we note the well-known fact of a change in state policy towards the Cossacks, actually from the mid-1930s. (campaign "for the Soviet Cossacks"). Despite the fact that even at that time the Cossacks often aroused hostility among orthodox Bolsheviks or radical non-residents (this circumstance was sadly admitted by the Secretary of the Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of the Azov-Chernomorsky Territory B.P. Sheboldaev in November 1935 in his article “ Cossacks in collective farms"), the Stalinist regime decided to establish allied relations with the Cossacks.

In the second half of the 1930s. Cossacks received the right to wear their uniform (both in the service and outside the service - as everyday clothes), serve in the Red Army, develop and promote their culture. The training system for young Cossacks was recreated (of course, in a modernized form, saturated with socialist ideology), during which they received not only military skills, but also got acquainted with the culture and traditions of their sub-ethnos. These were circles of "Voroshilov shooters" (common for all youth of the USSR) and "Voroshilov cavalrymen" (especially common in the Cossack regions and popular with the Cossacks). So, in the Cossack collective farm "Donskoy Skakun" in the Tarasovsky district of the Rostov region in the early 1940s. there were 90 collective farmers who had the “Voroshilov cavalryman” badge, and another 50 people (20 collective farmers and 30 schoolchildren) learned to ride a horse and cut vines, preparing to pass the standards. In the collective farm "Red Fighter" in the Primorsko-Akhtarsky district of the Krasnodar Territory, by August 1940, there were 68 "Voroshilov horsemen".

The authorities considered it their task to promote the promotion of Cossack culture, Cossack folklore. So, at the bureau of the Rostov Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in December 1939, the question “On the trip of the Rostov Song and Dance Ensemble of the Don Cossacks to Western Ukraine” was considered. The regional committee stated that the ensemble successfully fulfilled its cultural and educational mission, giving 36 concerts in a month (from November 20 to December 20) and providing great assistance in the development of the Red Army amateur performance. It was decided to reward the members of the ensemble (for which the bureau decided to ask the Department of Arts under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR to allocate 30 thousand rubles), provide a permanent stage and create conditions for creative activity, organize a systematic study of the choir and ballet, take measures to collect and use repertoire of Cossack folklore. In addition, it was decided to include a political instructor in the ensemble (a tribute to the era!).

In essence, the campaign “for the Soviet Cossacks” can be characterized as a set of measures to “provision” a part of the population, especially since in March 1936 the inspector of the Red Army cavalry S.M. Budyonny in the directed I.V. Stalin and K.E. Voroshilov, in a memorandum on the mood of the Soviet Cossacks and the need to restore its traditions, suggested that “the entire population of the Azov-Black Sea and North Caucasian territories, including the former Stavropol Territory, be considered Cossacks without exception, with the exception, of course, of the mountain peoples”, and also “in connection with craving, especially among young people, for wearing uniform Cossack clothes, to give the right to wear it to the entire population of these regions ... ".

Taking into account the campaign "for the Soviet Cossacks", one cannot agree with the statements of those authors who interpret collectivization as the final stage of "decossackization". It turns out that "decossackization" in this case implies the elimination of the Cossacks as a special social community or even as a sub-ethnos (or as a number of characteristics of the Cossacks as a sub-ethnos). Then a natural question arises: if collectivization completed the process of “decossackization”, for whom was the campaign “for the Soviet Cossacks” conceived and carried out?! Obviously, such an interpretation is hasty and is refuted by specific historical materials. In the end, the number of Cossacks was quite high and by the end of the 1930s. So, according to the 1937 census, out of 2.7 million inhabitants, more than 1 million Cossacks “presumably” lived in the Krasnodar Territory, which accounted for 38.6% of the total population of the region and 78.3% of the number of Kuban Cossacks in 1915 (Then there were more than 1.3 million).

Finally, it is difficult to talk about the “finishing off” of the Cossacks during collectivization, or about the fact that “by the mid-30s. the most active part of the Cossacks, consistently expressing the spiritual and material interests of this specific sub-ethnos, was either repressed or neutralized. Undoubtedly, a significant part of the Cossacks - the most active and consistent opponents of Soviet power and the Stalinist regime - were repressed in the 1930s. However, no one finally finished off the Cossacks. Firstly, the most active part of the Cossacks expressed the interests of this group (sub-ethnos) not only in the confrontation with the Soviet authorities, but also in alliance with it. Collectivization put forward a lot of Cossacks - the chairmen of the Cossack collective farms, who achieved excellent results in economic activity. Secondly, even if we talk about the opposition-minded Cossacks, they were not completely destroyed during collectivization.

This circumstance is clearly confirmed during the Great Patriotic War, when many Cossacks elected new form resistance to Soviet power and the Stalinist regime, a form of collaborationism - cooperation with the Nazis. In the total mass of collaborators (according to various sources, from 800 thousand to 1 million), the Cossacks made up a significant part - 94.5 thousand.

It can be argued with good reason that for a significant part of the peasants and collaborating Cossacks, the basis for cooperation with the Nazis was a sharp rejection of collectivization (and collective farms), the desire to reckon with the authorities for violence and bullying. For example, "policemen" of villages and villages in the territory temporarily occupied by the Nazis Rostov region in their autobiographies (collected by the Germans in order to accumulate information about their accomplices) they often indicated that before collectivization they ran their own household, and then did not want to join the collective farm and left the village. With the outbreak of war, many of them were drafted into the ranks of the Red Army, but often went over to the side of the enemy. As one of the policemen wrote in his autobiography: “in 1941 he was drafted into the Red Army, but surrendered at the first opportunity,” and then returned to his native village and became “an auxiliary police officer.”

Moreover, which is typical, most of the Nazi accomplices in the territories of the South of Russia called themselves Cossacks or “Russian Cossacks” (in particular, this was the case in the northern regions of the Don). In fact, however, many of these people did not belong to the Cossacks and misled the Germans in order to achieve greater privileges in the service (since the Cossacks enjoyed the special favor of the Nazis). The American journalist Alexander Werth, who was in the USSR during the Great Patriotic War, wrote that in the Kuban, the Nazis managed to attract up to 20 thousand Cossacks to their side in the military and police units, many of whom were actually “pseudo-Cossacks” and only “ pretended to be Cossacks. According to S.I. Drobyazko, about half of the personnel of the Cossack detachments that fought on the side of the Germans by April 1943 (that is, approximately 12 - 13 thousand people out of a total of 25 thousand) "... did not belong to either the former Cossack estate, or to the Cossack units of the Red Army and called themselves Cossacks only in order to somehow escape from the prisoner of war camps and thereby save their lives. In this case, we are again faced with the processes (or rather, politics) of "provisioning", only carried out not by the Soviet authorities, but by the Germans.

So, in our opinion, to apply the term "decossackization" (however it is understood) in relation to the period of collectivization, to characterize this policy as the final stage of "decossackization" is unlawful. If we understand “decossackization” as the elimination of estate remnants, then it is obvious that by the time the collectivization began, the Cossacks as an estate no longer existed. If we interpret "decossackization" in terms of the elimination of the Cossacks as a special community or sub-ethnos, then a number of unresolvable questions arise, generated by the discrepancy between theoretical constructions and specific historical materials. An analysis of such materials indicates that a feature of the implementation of collectivization was its conjugation with anti-Cossack actions. We can agree with the researchers who believe that the process of "collective farm construction" in the South of Russia was mediated by anti-Cossack actionism. But to talk about decossackization as a policy of the state in the 1930s seems unreasonable, because there are no specific indications in this regard in the sources. Equally unfounded are the allegations of “hidden decossackization” during collectivization, for which individual anti-Cossack actions are given out, relapses of the former repressive policy towards the Cossacks as an estate.

Historically, it would be legitimate to formulate that a feature of the implementation of collectivization on the Don was the presence of anti-Cossack actionism, as a result of extrapolation of the relations of the period of the civil war to a new historical situation of the socialist transformation of agriculture. At the same time, during the period of collectivization, there was a consolidation of the Cossacks in the face of non-residents, including new settlers, which contributed to the strengthening of the position of the Cossacks as a cultural and ethnic community, even under pressure from the authorities. It is also impossible to ignore the facts of cooperation of a certain part of the Cossacks (the poor and middle peasants, who were regarded by the Stalinist regime as allies) with the Soviet government. And, most importantly, it must be borne in mind that the Stalinist regime actually restored the special status of the Cossacks in the second half of the 1930s. and, in fact, carried out the "providing" part of the population.

In the last quarter of a century, such historians as Pivovarov, Mlechin, Svanidze and the like, when mentioning the atrocities of the civil war, necessarily focus on the so-called "Red Terror" and do not say a word that there was a "White Terror" no less cruel and bloody.

Let's fill in the gaps in our history and turn to the book of the White emigrant Georgy Pokrovsky “Denikin. The Year of Politics and Economics in the Kuban 1918-1919, published in Berlin in 1923.

I must say that the book caused a great resonance among the emigrant public. Reputable magazines published reviews of it, giving a conflicting assessment. But they agreed on one thing: the book is written on rich factual material. Its scientific weight is given by the author's use of rich documentary material: transcripts of meetings of the Kuban Rada, publications of official government documents and materials in official Kuban, as well as memoirs, various periodicals.

Pokrovsky in his work explores the topic morale white troops, the moral and psychological state of officers and soldiers, the source of the study are mainly documents.

He writes that Denikin's Volunteer Army repeatedly and everywhere subjected peasants and working people to violence and abuse during their stay in the Kuban.

In support of his words, Pokrovsky quotes the report of the cornet of the 1st plastun battalion V. F. Bliznyuk dated November 6, 1918 to the chairman of the legal commission of the emergency council. It said that with the occupation of the village of Abinskaya by a detachment of the Volunteer Army “... they no longer distinguished either non-residents or Cossacks. Usually, the victims of the execution were forced to strip naked, sometimes in the middle of the square, in the presence of adults and children, they were ordered to lie down, put boots on their heads or necks and flogged with ramrods or whips until blood spatters and pieces of torn meat flew in all directions ...

Mass of raped girls and even children. On one farm, eight Cossacks raped a woman who had been relieved of her burden three days ago. There were cases when the restorers of "law and order" gave life to women after obliging the latter to spend several nights with them ...

...Waves of Jewish pogroms swept through the territory of the rear of the Volunteer Army. The Jewish population was beaten almost without exception. Neither old nor young were spared. Enough Jewish surname, Jewish physiognomy, how you are doomed to death ... "

This is one of the numerous testimonies of the "White Terror". It reveals the true face of the counter-revolution, which is hidden under the mask of saving the motherland.

A video recording of a lecture and a transcript of a fragment where the historian talks about how the revolution touched the Kuban and why conflicts between Cossacks and nonresidents over the land issue became the main cause of the Civil War.

What did the February Revolution in the Kuban lead to?

The Kuban region - everything to the north of the Caucasus Mountains - it was a military region, a Cossack region, it had its own agenda. Everything to the south of the ridge - Novorossiysk, Tuapse, Sochi and Gagra - was part of the Black Sea province. It was a completely different administrative unit, all-Russian.

For the Kuban, the main problem was land. The Cossacks at that time were approximately 43%, the rest of the population was mostly Russian peasants from other cities. The main conflict sparked between the Cossacks and non-residents. Some wanted to defend estate privileges, others wanted equal land use. Auxiliary was the conflict between the Russian population as a whole and the "highlanders" (as they were then called): Circassians, Karachays (Karachay was also part of the Kuban region then), Abazins. Here, too, there was a land issue, because 85% of the population of the “highlanders” was rural.

The main conflict sparked between the Cossacks and nonresident

The former head of the Kuban region, Ataman Major General Babych, resigned after the February Revolution. He declared that he recognized the Provisional Government and transferred power to new bodies. Such bodies were the Kuban Regional Council, which was elected at the regional congress on April 16, 1917, and its executive committee. It included two representatives from the Cossacks and non-residents, from each of the seven departments, and four representatives from all the highlanders. It was not difficult to imagine that the representation of Cossacks and non-residents in the council was approximately equal. It was democratic and corresponded to the composition of the population. Commissar of the Provisional Government Bardish was sent from Petrograd. There were municipalities and city dumas.

On April 17, the Cossack Congress created the Kuban Regional Military Rada, a representative body, and the Military Government - executive agency. The government was headed by Filimonov, a representative of the linear Cossacks from the Abinsk department. Ryabovol from Chernomorsk became the chairman of the Rada - the same one whom Denikin's forces would later shoot in Rostov during the Civil War.

The crisis situation began to develop from the end of April 1917. The Cossack and nonresident parts of the Kuban population did not recognize each other, each considered only itself as the monopoly holders of power. In the future, this conflict begins to radicalize and grow, involving those who fled from the front and were demobilized. Highlanders and the urban working population are gradually being drawn into it.

Events developed differently in the Black Sea province, the administrative center of which was the city of Novorossiysk, a large port with railway workshops and cement plants. The Bolsheviks and Mensheviks dominated there, there was no Cossack factor. But in the Black Sea province there was another problem - its protractedness, and as a result, in Anapa, Novorossiysk, Tuapse, Gelendzhik and Sochi, events developed in completely different ways.

All these revolutionaries sat in the same cafe and talked peacefully. When the directive came from Petrograd to split into Mensheviks, Bolsheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, they quarreled

Alexander Cherkasov

Alexander Cherkasov, a Sochi historian, described the features of the revolutionary events in the Black Sea province like this: “All these revolutionaries were sitting in the same cafe and talking peacefully. When the directive came from Petrograd to split into Mensheviks, Bolsheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, they quarreled - people who sat at the same table, drank, knew each other and were in personal relationships. And then the contradictions began to escalate - but one must understand that in such small provincial territories, conflicts were often imposed from outside, from the capitals. The internal reasons and lines of demarcation were quite different.

The main reason for the Civil War in the Kuban, which will flare up by the end of 1917, is the conflict between the Cossacks and nonresidents, the land conflict. And also the issue of hostility and identity conflict, which by that time had already been developing for a very long time. If we talk about the Kuban, this led to the fact that in early October 1917 the Second Regional Rada proclaimed itself the monopoly owner of power. Out-of-town structures found themselves, as it were, in a semi-legal position, they began to collect weapons, mobilize and prepare a speech against the Cossack Rada. The events to which this will lead to the beginning of 1918 remain outside the scope of our analysis.

Thematic materials: