Overview

Beginning in the fall of 1920, Aleksandr Antonov led an insurgency that became the largest armed peasant revolt against the Soviets during the civil war. Yet by the summer of 1921, the revolt had been crushed, and popular support for the movement had all but disappeared. Until now, details of this conflict have remained hidden. Erik Landis mines recently opened provincial and central Soviet archives and international collections to provide a depth of detail and historical analysis never before possible in this definitive account of the uprising. Landis examines both sides of the conflict, probing the testimonies of the insurgents, their opponents, and those caught in between. We witness firsthand the frustrations, failures, and internal conflicts of the Bolsheviks and the spirit of rebellion that drove the insurgents and helped drive a localized dispute into a well-organized mass rebellion that struck fear in the hearts of Communist leaders. This political and military threat was influential in bringing about Lenin's conciliatory New Economic Policy, which allowed farmers and villages to sustain themselves in a quasi-market economy. Bandits and Partisans presents a gripping tale of brutality, domination, and revolt, placing readers at the frontlines of the complex and rich history of the Russian civil war and the consolidation of the new Soviet state.

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9780822968542

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Reviews

Bandits and Partisans covers the most significant anti-Soviet peasant rebellion in European Russia. Landis's account does it full justice, covering the political, military, and social dimensions of the insurgent movement and its suppression, and it will become the definitive work in English on this important moment in Soviet history. This book is an impressive contribution to the history of the Russian revolution and civil war, and twentieth-century European history more generally. It is superb history, superbly told. * Peter Holquist, University of Pennsylvania * A thoroughly researched and intelligently constructed book. The author is at his best in capturing contemporary voices that continue to speak eloquently nearly a century after the events. * The Historian * Landis has written what will be for many years the definitive history of the Antonov movement. In a work of prodigious scholarship, he has trawled the archives of both Moscow and Tambov to produce the first detailed account of Antonov's insurgency and its suppression. * Europe-Asia Studies * The definitive account of the Antonov uprising. Based on years of meticulous research in the archives, informed by a profound understanding of the revolution in the countryside, and passionately written in lucid prose, this is an important contribution to our understanding of the Russian peasantry and the violent early years of the Soviet regime. * Orlando Figes, Birkbeck College, University of London * This meticulously researched book does more than give a narrative of the Antonov uprising and its suppression. Landis's account offers new perspectives on high-level politics during the Russian civil war, the process of Soviet state-building in the provinces, and the nature of popular politics in the villages of Tambov province. . . . a sweeping study that provides a great deal of information. * Canadian Journal of History *

Author Information

Erik C. Landis is lecturer in modern European history at Oxford Brookes University.

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