Green Armies - Backdrop

Backdrop

The Green movement was, for the most part, a popular reaction to Bolshevik activity in the countryside during the Civil War of 1917-1922. After the second revolution of 1917, the Bolshevik government instituted War Communism, sending officials through the peasant lands of central Russia to collect supplies that the state needed in order to sustain the military and to begin building a socialist economy. Common targets for official requisitioning included recruits for the Red Army, horses, and grain. Collectivization – which required relocation and novel farming techniques – angered peasants who were hardly predisposed to leave their home and adopt a new way of life when they were already struggling to survive. To make matters worse, requisitioning units and agricultural overseers often overstepped their official duties, plundering households indiscriminately and harming innocent villagers. The official policies were inflammatory in the first place, and their harsh implementation engendered widespread resentment to the Bolshevik regime. Bloody repression of any popular unrest further alienated the peasantry and, when Green armies begin to form, encouraged them to devote their lives to the anti-Communist reaction.