An armed movement of Soviet power supporters in the territory under the control of the anti-Bolshevik governments and interventionists.

 

In Altai, the first pockets of peasant resistance against the Provisional Siberian Government appeared in autumn 1918. Thus, in September 1918 the Slavgorod uprising broke out, which was caused by forced mobilization in the Siberian Army. It was brutally suppressed by Cossacks under the command of Ataman [commander] Boris Annenkov, with mass torture and cases of violence, the village of Cherny Dol was burned. A total of about 1,500 people died of repressions. In 1919, Grigory Rogov and the anarchist Ivan Novoselov became leaders of a mass peasant movement against the armies of Aleksander Kolchak in the Chumysh District near Barnaul.

 

The movement of Red partisans (guerillas) in the rear of Aleksander Kolchak’s armies reached its largest scale by the middle of 1919. One of the most famous centers of resistance to the Whites was the Steppe-Badzhee Partisan Republic, established by the rebels near the village of Steppe-Badzhee in Krasnoyarsk district of the Yenisei governorate. The commander of the Peasant Army was the Bolshevik Aleksander Kravchenko. In early April 1919, a partisan detachment led by Pyotr Shchetinkin joined the army, which had been fighting the Kolchak’s troops in Achinsk district since the beginning of the year. Another major pocket of the peasant movement in Yenisei governorate, centered in the Taseevskaya volost of Kansk district, was called the Taseevskaya (North-Kansk) Partisan Republic, led by Bolsheviks Fyodor Astafyev, Vasily Yakovenko, and others. From the end of 1918, Nestor Kalandarishvili’s detachment was active in Irkutsk governorate.

 

In the spring and summer of 1919, there were as many as 140,000–150,000 fighters in the guerrilla peasant detachments of Siberia. Many detachments operated along the Trans-Siberian Railway. Minusinsk, Kansk, Krasnoyarsk, and partially Yenisei districts of Yenisei governorate were under the control of partisans. The partisan movement in Siberia provided significant assistance to the troops of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army during the defeat of Aleksander Kolchak’s troops in 1919 and early 1920.

 

The main areas of the partisan movement in the Far East were Transbaikalia, the Amur Region, and Primorye. One of the first organizations in Transbaikalia was the Altagachan "forest commune", created in November 1918 by Makar Yakimov, Samuil Zarubin, and others. The White Terror, conducted by Ataman Grigory Semyonov, sparked a series of uprisings, the participants of which joined the partisans. In January 1920, the partisans repelled the Japanese offensive. In the territories liberated by the partisans were held elections of delegates to the Congress of the workers of the Baikal region. The Congress held on March 28 – April 8, 1920 decided on the formation of the Far Eastern Republic (DVR). In April–October 1920, partisans took part in military operations, which resulted in the liberation of Transbaikalia from the Whites and interventionists.

 

In the Amur region, the Red partisans blockaded Blagoveshchensk, Alekseevsk, and several other settlements. With their help, Soviet power was restored in the region. Later the partisan detachments of the Amur Region became part of the DVR People’s Revolutionary Army.

 

The main centers of the partisan movement in Primorye were the Suchan coal mines. The core of the partisans here were the miners. Since June 27, 1919, the Bolshevik Sergey Lazo became the commander of Primorye partisan forces. In October 1922, partisans took part in the assault of Spassk in the Primorskaya operation of the DVR People’s Revolutionary Army. After the end of the main battles of the Civil War in the Far East by the end of 1922, the partisan detachments were disbanded.