Mariinsky (Chumaysky) peasant uprising of 1918: rebels, motives and behavior

The forerunner of the partisan movement in Western Siberia was the massive spontaneous peasant uprising that broke out in a number of districts in the period of «democratic counter-revolution». Analysis of the degree of scientific problem elaboration allowed to formulate the following problem: to reconstruct the social behavior of the Mariinsky district rebels during the uprising in October 1918, based on a multidisciplinary approach (historical synthesis, system integration, socio-psychological, socio-cultural aspects of the study). Rather violent insurgency began in the Mariinsky district of Tomsk province; where on 19th to 28th of October, 1918 a powerful peasant uprising broke out in more than 10 volosts with a total number of participants about seven thousand armed peasants. The state of forestry in this part of the vast province of Tomsk was very frustrating. The scale of unauthorized timber felling from state dachas reached terrifying proportions. Particularly threatening was the situation in Chumaysky forestry. Throughout the spring and summer 1918 tens of thousands cubic yards of timber were floated on the river Kiya; on both banks of the river there were big warehouses with illegally felled timber. In the 6 and 7 of October a punitive detachment arrived at the village of Pokrovka to recalculate the forest. After the detachment in Chumay had been besieged, it was forced to remain inactive. Meanwhile, the rebels disarmed the detachment and murdered everyone whom they considered to be involved in their disasters. The rebellious peasants behaved with extreme aggressiveness which manifested itself in violence out of revenge. The authors of newspaper articles noted the incredible cruelty and anger of the rebellious peasants, presenting their actions as "a terrible, reckless violence". More objective reasons for the Mariinsky (Chumaysky) uprising are presented in the report of the Mariinsky county commissioner submitted to Tomsk province commissioner. Among them, he singled out heavy taxation and penalties imposed on the local population for unauthorized tree felling within Chumay forestry; taking the recruits fleeing from military service to the ranks of the Red Army; Bolsheviks' propaganda aimed at the ignorance of population; the inept actions of the detachment under the command of warrant officer Dmitriev who had been sent from Tomsk. Forestry Department officials repeatedly expressed concern about the state of forestry, forest management issues, the protection of forests, which were serious problems in the post-revolutionary period. Unfortunately, the representatives of the military, who had been sent to eliminate forest theft, acted indiscriminately and punished local farmers for other infractions (desertion, moonshine). The strict measures in some areas set the local population against the forest officials. People felt that all those penalties, which they were undergoing, had been caused by foresters' invitation of military units. The differences, sometimes quite significant, in the activities of military units led to such results. Unauthorized felling of forest did not stop after the suppression of the Chumaysky peasant revolt, not only during the Civil War, but the NEP. Since the end of 1918 Anti-Kolchak armed uprisings of the peasants initiated a guerrilla movement in their areas, which posed a serious threat to Kolchak's rear, especially at the stage of the decisive battles with the Red Army.

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