Uprising in the Donbass of 1905-1907. Donbass during the years of the Russian bourgeois-democratic revolution and the First World War. Residents of the region during the Civil War

The central place in the hall is occupied by materials about the first Russian revolution in the Donbass. The exhibition includes leaflets exposing the predatory, anti-people nature of the Russo-Japanese War, dedicated to the events of January 9, 1905.

Under the leadership of the Bolsheviks, the workers of Donbass prepared for armed struggle, created fighting squads. Of great interest is the subscription list for the collection of funds for the purchase of weapons, pikes and spears, which the workers made at the factories.

In April 1905, the Third Congress of the RSDLP was held. He armed the Party and the working class with a program of struggle for the victory of the democratic revolution. These decisions were substantiated in V. I. Lenin's book "Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the Democratic Revolution". In the exhibition - the title page of this work.

Among the documentary materials, there is a photograph of the house where the Enakievo Council of Workers' Deputies met, photographs of the buildings of the Mariupol and Yuzovsky Soviets of Workers' Deputies.

The electrified map shows the places where the Soviets of Workers' Deputies and fighting squads were created: Yuzovka, Grishino, Gorlovka, Avdeevka, Yenakiyevo, Mariupol, Debaltseve.

The revolution reached its highest rise during the December armed uprising, one of the main regions of which was the Donbass, where militant workers' squads disarmed policemen and soldiers. On December 16, 1905, the tsarist authorities tried to arrest the Gorlovka Soviet of Workers' Deputies. The troops opened fire. In the exposition - a telegraph apparatus st. Gorlovka, through which a call for help was transmitted. Working combat squads from Yenakiyevo, Alchevsk, Debaltseve, Lugansk and other cities arrived in Gorlovka (about four thousand people). A small detachment remained to defend the station, where the rebel headquarters and reserve were located. The rest moved to the barracks of the dragoons and forced them to retreat into the field towards Yenakiyevo. The picture of this battle on December 17, 1905 is clearly reflected in the diorama (artists N. Zhdanov and A. Aslanov). New military units, sent to help the Gorlovsky garrison, captured the station, defeated the workers who were on the waste heap of mine No. 1. The forces turned out to be unequal. The rebels were forced to stop fighting. The defeat of the Gorlovka armed uprising was a turning point in the revolutionary movement in the Donbass and Ukraine.

In the hall - the peak of the participant in the uprising of the Enakievsky worker Gvozdev, the pikes and spears of the Grishinsky and Yasino-Vatskaya combat squads, a copy of the cannon of the Grishinsky squad, portraits of leaders and participants in the revolutionary movement in the Donbass and the Gorlovsky armed uprising: G. F. Tkachenko-Petrenko, A. F. Shcherbakov (Enakievo), P. S. Deinego, N. F. Faibyshev (Grishino), V. A. Isichenko, and A. M. Kuznetsov-Zubarev (Gorlovka). The tsarist authorities organized a brutal reprisal against the participants in the uprising. Eight people were sentenced to death, among them G. F. Tkachenko-Petrenko, A. F. Shcherbakov, A. M. Kuznetsov-Zubarev. The exposition includes a report on the execution of the sentence, a photograph of members of the Grishinsky fighting squad driven to hard labor, a photograph of N. N. Sinebryukhov, a Cossack of the Don Hundred (Yuzovka), a member of the underground committee of the RSDLP, sentenced to life imprisonment for revolutionary activities. In the window there are personal belongings of G. Obukhov, a participant in the uprising, a member of the Grishinsky combat squad, who died in hard labor, letters from participants in the uprising from the Shlisselburg fortress, shackles, N. F. Faibyshev's exile-settlement passport.

Leaflets “To the peasants”, “To all peasants”, a picture about the speech of the peasants of the village of Pokrovskoye (now the village of Boevoye, Volodarsky district) in October 1906 against the Yekaterinoslav governor Klingenberg, who traveled around the Mariupol district, tell about the peasant movement in the Donbass, materials about the unrest of the peasants , about their joining the working fighting squads. The peasantry was the ally of the proletariat in the bourgeois-democratic revolution.

The exposition contains materials covering the struggle of the workers and peasants of Donbass during the retreat of the revolution. Despite the defeat of the December armed uprising, the brutal persecution of the participants in the revolution, the struggle of the masses did not stop. In 1906, the strikes of the workers of Donbass continued, there were clashes between the strikers and the police. Kramatorsk became the center of revolutionary rallies. They were attended by peasants of nearby villages, workers of many mines and factories.

Revolution 1905-1907 was defeated, but its historical significance is very great. It dealt a blow to autocracy and imperialism and was a dress rehearsal without which the victory of the October Revolution of 1917 would have been impossible.

Donbass in the whirlwind of wars and revolutions

What were the consequences for the region of the First World War.

Revolutionary Donbass.

Residents of the region during the Civil War

They walk into the distance with a mighty step ...

- Who else is there? Come out!

It's the red flag wind

Played ahead...

A. Blok "Twelve"

In this lesson you will learn:

1) talk about facts related to the development of our region;

2) name prominent figures of the civil war in Donbass;

3) give a short description of the main events and formulate their own value judgments;

4) work with a variety of historical sources - documents, photographs.

Events of the first Russian revolution (1905-1907) in Donbass.

By the beginning of the twentieth century, the Russian Empire was one of the largest states in the world. Most of the inhabitants were employed in agriculture. The country developed rapidly. But the life of the common people remained too hard, at the beginning of the twentieth century. there was a crop failure, economic problems, because of which factories stopped working, unemployment grew.

The impetus for changes in the country was given by the revolution of 1905. It began on Sunday, January 9, 1905, with thousands of peaceful processions of St. Petersburg workers. They went to the Winter Palace to hand the tsar a letter with a story about their misfortunes.

But the government is not yet accustomed to talking to the people. Thousands of people gathered together and going to the royal palace - this is for the king and ministers

meant one thing - rebellion. And there could be only one answer - to shoot, to suppress. And the workers, believing in the good king, went to him with their families, in festive clothes. During the execution of a peaceful demonstration on January 9, 1905, many old people, women, and children died. This day entered the history of Russia under the name "Bloody Sunday".

Together with ordinary Russians, faith in the good tsar also perished that day.

The news of the execution quickly spread throughout all regions of Russia. Angry workers armed themselves. In Russia by this time there were not only workers' circles, but also parties. The parties (numerous associations of like-minded people) included professional revolutionaries, workers and all sympathizers. In 1889, the RSDLP party appeared in Minsk - the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, in 1903 in London it split into Bolsheviks and Mensheviks.

These parties were called workers because the revolutionaries pinned their main hopes on the workers. The workers lived in poor conditions, they had nothing to lose but their chains, as they said then. Already from the end of the 19th century, the workers of Russia celebrated May 1 - the Day of International Solidarity of Workers: they gathered outside the city, in nature, on the so-called. mayevki, talked, celebrated, sang songs, listened to party lecturers. The lecturers told them about socialism.

At the heart of all socialist ideas is the dream of a society of equal people - socialism.

Under socialism, everyone must work to the limit of their strength and capabilities. Having worked according to his ability, a person should receive wages according to his work. Thus, people will create a society of unlimited wealth. And most importantly, in this society everyone will work honestly. You don't have to count who did how much. Money will disappear. Come to the store, take what you need. Such a society is called communism. And the socialist party will later be called communist. And the goal is also communism.

Ordinary people reasoned: in order to be fair today, everything should be taken away from the rich and divided equally. Start with this. So that no one else would take away the results of the worker's labor, and wages would be fair.

The Bolsheviks were engaged in agitation, i.e. dissemination of their ideas in cities and villages. Many peasants lived very poorly, they did not have enough land for cultivation, and the noble landowners had a lot of it. Therefore, the peasants expressed their disagreement with the structure of the state by smashing the estates of the landowners, appropriated their land. The revolution of 1905 also affected the peasants: peasant uprisings swept across Russia.

Barricade battles began in the cities - the streets were blocked by large rubbish, turned into fortresses to fight government troops. There were serious fights in Moscow. But very often the army refused to shoot at the people. During 1905-1906. Entire regiments and even ships (the battleship Potemkin and the cruiser Ochakov) went over to the side of the rebels, because they served in the tsarist army

yesterday's peasants and workers. This behavior of the army - not only the soldiers, but also the officers was the most disturbing for the government.

The government and the entire royal court realized that it was time to move on to fundamental changes in the administration of the state - to attract more intelligent people to governance. The country received the first Constitution - the basic law of the state. In 1906, the legislative body, the State Duma, gathered for its first meeting. True, not everyone received the right to vote - women and the very poor strata of the population did not have it, but a start was made.

Under the leadership of the Bolsheviks, the workers of Donbass were also preparing for armed struggle, creating combat squads. Councils of workers' deputies and fighting squads were created in the cities: Yuzovka, Grishino, Gorlovka, Avdeevka, Yenakiyevo, Mariupol, Debaltsevo.

The revolution reached its highest rise during the December armed uprising, one of the main regions of which was the Donbass, where militant workers' squads disarmed policemen and soldiers. The workers elected their own organs of power - the Soviets. On December 16, 1905, the tsarist authorities tried to arrest the Gorlovka Soviet of Workers' Deputies. A battle ensued. Working combat squads arrived in Gorlovka from Yenakiyevo, Alchevsk, Debaltseve, Lugansk and other cities (about four thousand people). A small detachment remained to defend the station where the rebel headquarters was located, the rest moved to the dragoon barracks and forced them to retreat into the field towards Yenakiyevo. New military units, sent to help the Gorlovsky garrison, seized the station, defeated the workers who were on the waste heap of mine No. 1

The world economic crisis of 1900-1903, as well as the defeat of Russia in the war with Japan in 1904-1905. exacerbated economic and political contradictions, increased dissatisfaction with the authorities among the population. All this contributed to mass unrest in the country, which eventually grew into a revolution. The beginning of the revolution in Russia is considered to be the bloody events in St. Petersburg on Sunday, January 9, 1905. On this day, a 150,000-strong demonstration of workers and members of their families was shot.

The news of the death spread throughout the country and aroused the indignation of the whole people. Revolutionary events in Ukraine and Donbass began to unfold very quickly. In the winter and spring of 1905, mass political strikes took place in the cities, and in the summer the army, navy and peasantry joined the revolutionary struggle. In June 1905, an uprising of sailors on the battleship Potemkin took place in Odessa.

The revolutionary movement in the Donbass was started with the strike of Yuzovka metallurgists on January 17, 1905, then, on January 22, the Petrovsky plant in Yenakiyevo stopped. In January-March, strikes took place at all metallurgical plants in Donbass. The bulk of the strikes of this period of the revolution were also of an economic nature.

In October 1905, the All-Russian political strike began with economic and political demands. This strike also engulfed the Yekaterinoslav railway, which passed through the Donbass. In October-December, the first Soviets of Workers' Deputies arose in Yenakiyevo, Mariupol, Yuzovka, and at a number of factories and mines - strike committees, which introduced an 8-hour working day at enterprises without permission, set prices for products in factory shops.

The December 1905 armed uprising in Moscow is considered to be the highest upsurge of the revolution. In the Donbass, one of the largest actions of workers in 1905 was the December armed uprising at the mashza-voda in Gorlovka. It began with the fact that on December 16, 1905, a meeting of workers took place at the plant demanding higher wages, which escalated into an armed uprising on December 17. Troops were called in to suppress it and opened fire on the protesters, as a result of which 14 people were killed and about 30 wounded. By a court decision, 8 people were sentenced to promotion, more than 80 people were sent to hard labor. In 1965, a memorial obelisk was erected at the site of the battle of the workers' squads.

The consequence of the revolutionary events was the signing by Tsar Nicholas II of a special Manifesto on October 17, 1905, in which he promised the people civil liberties (personal immunity, freedom of conscience, press, assembly, unions), holding elections to the State Duma (Russian parliament). This document had extremely important consequences. First, he contributed to the expansion of legal political and cultural activities in the country. Only in Ukraine in 1905-1907. 24 newspapers and magazines began to appear. In the Yekaterinoslav province, which included the territory of the present Donbass, the newspaper Yuzhnaya Nedelya appeared. The decree of 1876 on the prohibition of Ukrainian writing was canceled. Secondly, the process of development of mass public organizations and political parties has accelerated. In 1907, the Socialist-Revolutionary Party was created in Ukraine, in 1908 - the Association of Ukrainian Progressives (TUP). Thirdly, it became possible for the opposition forces to legally influence the authorities by using the rostrum of the State Duma. In the 1st and 2nd State Dumas (1906-1907), deputies from the Yekaterinoslav province were also represented, including one of the founders of the Union of October 17 party, editor of the newspaper Vestnik of the Yekaterinoslav Zemstvo, M.V. Rodzianko, from March 1911 to February 1917 - Chairman of the 3rd and 4th State Dumas.

On June 3, 1907, the Tsar's Manifesto was published on the dissolution of the oppositional 2nd State Duma and a new law on elections to the Third Duma, which met the interests of the landlords and oligarchs. Under the new law, 80% of the population of the Russian Empire was deprived of voting rights. In fact, a coup d'état was carried out, which opened a period of reaction in the country. In history, this act is called the June 3 coup.

Thus, Bloody Sunday 1905 and the subsequent events of the revolution split society and marked the beginning of the decline of the Romanov dynasty.

The first Russian revolution, despite the defeat, was of great importance. It forced the tsarist government to make serious concessions to the people. However, social tension in the country was not completely resolved: the autocracy was preserved with certain changes, landlordism was not completely eliminated and the agrarian question did not lose its acuteness, the class division of society remained unshakable. Revolution 1905-1907 led to massive and merciless terror in Russia. The individual terror of the Narodnaya Volya was replaced by mass terrorist attacks, the victims of which were about 9 thousand people, of which almost half were civil servants. In 1905 alone, more than 700 high-ranking Russian officials died from terrorist attacks.

Very interesting material from 1936 about the uprising of workers in the Donbass in 1905, with battles for Gorlovka, Debaltseve, Yasinovataya, Avdeevka and other places well known from recent events.

The rebellious Donbass of 1905

From destroying taverns and shops, the workers are moving over to more organized methods of struggle. In the mines of Donbass, as early as 1898, the first social-democratic leaflet "A Letter to the Miners" appeared. In the Shcherbinovsky and Nelepovsky mines, since 1901, the first revolutionary circles appeared, in which G. I. Petrovsky worked. Two years later Comrade Artyom organizes social democratic cells at the Berestovsky and Bogodukhovsky mines, in Yuzovka. Small groups of Social Democratic workers, 5 to 10 each, are also organized at other mines. It was to these years that the emergence and rapid flourishing of the Social Democratic Union of Mining Workers, which in 1903 alone managed to distribute tens of thousands of revolutionary leaflets among miners and metalworkers, belong. The leaders of the movement are the most advanced sections of the Donetsk workers: metalworkers, workers of the metallurgical and machine-building plants of Donbass, and workers of the railway workshops of the Catherine's railway.
It is here that the first party Bolshevik organizations of Donbass arise. Bolshevik groups were in Lugansk, Grishin, Enakievo, Popasnaya. In the course of 1904, for the most part, they carried out extensive agitational and organizational work.
The proletarian Ekaterinoslav had a huge influence on the nature and scope of the movement in the Donbass. (now Dnepropetrovsk) with its huge metallurgical plants and the oldest and largest Bolshevik organization.
Even before 1905, she organized a number of revolutionary mass actions of workers, strikes, demonstrations, rallies, sometimes accompanied by real battles with detachments of gendarmes and regular troops.

In response to "Bloody Sunday," a wave of strikes, demonstrations, and rallies swept across the Donbass, attracting even the most backward layers of miners.
The workers of Donbass unanimously responded to the call for the first general political strike in October 1905.
Already on October 7, as soon as the telegram of the Yekaterinoslav strike committee, which had been sent all over the line, was received, a railroad strike began in the Donbass. On the same day, the Yasinovataya, Grishino, and Yuzovo stations went on strike, and traffic along the Ekaterininskaya road came to a halt.
The first general political railway strike in the Donbass lasted two weeks; here she was even more stubborn than in the center. The mass movement gushed over the heads of the Socialist-Revolutionary Menshevik leaders from the All-Russian Railway Bureau. Despite the order given by them - on October 18 to stop the strike - on the Ekaterininsky road, this main highway of Donbass, the strike continued until October 20, and partly until October 23-24, until the administration satisfied the demands of the workers.
Although this first all-Russian railway strike was formally led by the semi-bourgeois Socialist-Revolutionary-Menshevik All-Russian Railway Bureau, on the ground, in Yekaterinoslav and Donbass, the strike was led by Bolshevik committees, which, during the strike, were able to secretly carry out such revolutionary measures as the introduction of an 8-hour working day in many railway workshops, depots and other enterprises.

The workers of Donbass are increasingly taking the path of the most acute political struggle, preparing for an armed uprising as the only way that can radically change their situation.
In contrast to the Mensheviks, who view the political strike mainly as a means of putting pressure on the existing authorities and their bodies, the Bolshevik organizations of Donbass were able to lead the workers on the path of immediate preparation for an armed uprising.
From the south, from revolutionary Sevastopol, news of a new uprising of revolutionary Black Sea sailors further accelerated the process of preparing for an armed uprising.
In November, at the congress of workers of the Catherine's railway (about 700 people attended), convened to hear the report of the delegates to the congress of the All-Russian Railway Union, representatives of the Bolsheviks made a special report - on the revolutionary events in Sevastopol, on the heroic battles of the sailors with the autocracy. This message had a revolutionary effect on the audience. As a result, a decision was made: “To recognize the participation of railway workers in the transportation of troops for the intended purpose (i.e., suppression of an uprising. - M.K.) is tantamount to participation in the murder, and the railway employees, participating in it in one way or another, are accomplices in these crimes deserving the most severe public condemnation.

The delegates of this congress went to the stations of Donbass with instructions to local organizations - to take all measures to prevent the transport of troops to suppress the revolutionary movement. The congress delegates carried Bolshevik slogans and Bolshevik exercises to their places, and this circumstance even more accelerated the course of events brewing in the Donbass.
The workers stopped passing military trains and demanded that the soldiers hand over their weapons. The soldiers, mostly returning from the Manchurian front, having endured from there a deep hatred for the tsarist system, unquestioningly handed over their weapons to the workers. In this way, the workers acquired the first rifles.
Back in November, under the influence of disturbing rumors about a pogrom being prepared by the Black Hundreds, in Grishin, where there was the strongest Bolshevik organization in the Donbass, the first detachment of workers' self-defense was created. Grishino becomes the de facto center for the preparation of an armed uprising throughout the Donbass.
The leaders of the Bolshevik committees all the time, at the request of the workers of various settlements and stations, go out to speak at meetings and to lead the revolutionary movement of the workers.
In December 1905, the miners of Gorlovka, Sofievsky and Verovsky mines, which were then the most active and advanced in the Donbass, marched in step with the metalworkers and railway workers. Here they openly prepare for an armed uprising, collect weapons, and at the Verovsky mines, workers seize 150 pounds of steel from the owners for making pikes, which are armed with workers' squads.

In the course of the general strike in the Donbass, the first soviets of workers' deputies are organized. They are being created in Lugansk, Yuzovka, Yenakievo, at the Voznesensky mines, etc. The influence and power of these first mine soviets of workers' deputies in the Donbass were so great that even before the armed uprising and the military seizure of power by workers in individual mines, tsarist power actually ceased to exist. Here, for example, is what the semi-liberal newspaper Vestnik Yuga wrote in November 1905:
“At the Petrovsky mines (station Yenakiyevo) and its district, at the Verovsky and Sofievsky mines, order is exemplary and is maintained by the workers themselves. Workers come to their elected deputies not only for advice on purely working issues, but even resort to court in family troubles. More Not so long ago, the name "Social Democrat" frightened the workers, but now every worker wants to call himself this honorary name. The district council of the local Social Democratic organization was to meet the other day, the workers came in masses...
Solidarity here is complete. When 6 deputies were fired at the Sofievsky mine, all the workers went on strike and the delegates were received again...
All the mines and factories of this region have elected their deputies, and now there is a council of workers' deputies here.

In a few months of the revolution, the class self-consciousness of the Donetsk workers stepped so far forward as a decade of ordinary life could not have done: “... look,” wrote Ilyich in 1905, “how quickly yesterday’s slave straightens up, how the flame of freedom sparkles even in half-extinguished eyes."
The arming of the workers takes place openly, before the eyes of the authorities. Powerless to prevent and prevent this, the authorities decide to use the weapons of the workers in the service of the counter-revolution and the Black Hundred. A tried-and-tested provocative method is used: agitators of the Black Hundreds travel around the mines, urging them to "beat the Jews", revolutionaries, etc. In some places, among the declassed elements and tramps, this agitation was successful. However, pogroms are quickly prevented by organized workers' self-defense detachments. The workers now know "whom to beat": the Bolshevik organizations have succeeded in opening their eyes to reality.

A new, even more powerful impetus was given to the militant movement of the Donetsk workers by the announcement of the December general political strike. On December 7, in Yekaterinoslav, a telegram was received from the center announcing a general political strike. And immediately, by telegraph, a telegram was sent to all the stations and settlements of the Donbass, along the Ekaterininsky road, with the following content: "Today, from 10 o'clock in the morning, a general strike of all roads and workers has been declared. Comrades."
To lead the general strike in Yekaterinoslav on December 8, a militant strike committee was created, in which the Yekaterinoslav Bolsheviks played a decisive role.

The Combat Strike Committee played a huge role in preparing an armed uprising not only in Yekaterinoslav itself, but throughout the entire Donets Basin: it issued its bulletins and orders daily, which were carried out by all organizations. The Combat Strike Committee instructed representatives of the grass-roots workers' organizations of the Donbass, sent out a huge amount of literature to the localities, and directed the largest demonstrations of the workers. In order to prevent the transportation of troops to suppress the revolution, the combat strike committee issued an order on December 8 to stop movement along the Catherine's railway. The order was firmly implemented by all local committees in the Donbass. An exception was made only for delegate trains and those military echelons in which demobilized soldiers were returning from the Manchurian front. Representatives of the committee met the soldiers and set the condition for their further advancement by rail to the indispensable surrender of weapons. The soldiers responded to these ultimatum demands of the workers' power with unquestioning obedience. In this way, the workers at their disposal received weapons. Work detachments are organized at the stations, which at first bear the name of "self-defense detachments", at first pursuing the goal of preventing Black Hundred pogroms, but in the next few days they become fighting proletarian squads.
At all stations, the power of the old railway administration was eliminated, its orders were not carried out by anyone. Catherine's road thus passed into the hands of the workers. By resolutions of the combat strike committee, the head of the road and the heads of individual services were removed from their posts. In their places were nominated elected from the workers.

The following telegram from police chief Mashevsky to the Governor of Yekaterinoslav shows how broad and friendly the militant revolutionary activity of the insurgent Donetsk workers assumed:
"I report to Your Excellency the workers of the Yuryevsky plant, the employees of the Alchevsk Debaltsevo station, formed an armed police and a strike committee chaired by engineer Kharchenko, supporting the anti-government strike, all passing by cheap trains, individual soldiers, police officers are being disarmed."
Then, on December 14, the police officer from Bakhmut telegraphed that “all junction stations, cash desks, traffic were seized by the committee and they are trying to take money from post offices, state-owned wine shops. , the issuance of confiscated weapons, the telephone in Grishin is in the hands of the committee. Almost all factories cease their activities, workers everywhere are arming. Stations Nikitovka, Gorlovka are guarded by companies, the bailiff Avdeevka is expected to be defeated, agrarian riots have begun in Bantysh's economy ... ".

The armed uprising grew by leaps and bounds, literally by the hour. As early as December 8, the workers of Grishin, Avdeevka, Yasinovataya, Debaltsevo, Gorlovka and other settlements and stations went on strike. On the same day, working fighting squads are organized, attacks on the police and troops begin, and weapons are taken from them. "The Debaltsevo police have been disarmed and dispersed" - such telegrams followed not only that Debaltsevo, but also from dozens of other points. All power is seized by the workers. Where the Bolshevik organizations were still weak, comrades from the stronger party committees, Grishin and Yenakiyev, were called in to help, from where the fiery and courageous Bolshevik worker comrade often came. Tkachenko-Petrenko, hanged in 1908 for participating in the uprising. So it was, for example, in Nikitovka, where the workers, having decided to start a strike, first contacted the Gorlovka Bolshevik Committee, and on December 13 Gorlovka Bolsheviks arrived in Nikitovka to help. The Bolsheviks from Gorlovka provided the same assistance to the workers in Debaltseve. There was also a strong connection between the Nikitovsky workers and peasants. The rallies on December 9 and 10 dedicated to the general strike were invited and attended by the peasants of the surrounding villages.

In the days of December 8-14, the workers actively create militant workers' squads. Organized in October and November, as we wrote above, to combat pogroms, in December the detachments of workers' self-defense turn into fighting workers' squads, intensively stocking up on weapons. The squads grew every day: they arose in Grishin, in Avdeevka, Yenakievo, Yuzovka, Debaltsevo, Yasinovataya, Druzhkovka, Verovka, etc., hundreds of workers joined them. In connection with the growth of the detachments, despite the fact that the weapons necessary for the detachments were taken by the workers from the soldiers and the police, they were still not enough. For weapons, the Grishins sent a representative of the workers to Rostov, who brought a box of revolvers for the first time. More than once Donetsk combatants sent their comrades for weapons to other cities.

Weapons were obtained by all means. For example, the Debaltsevo squad was entirely armed with weapons taken from the gendarmes and police.
From the very beginning, a close relationship was established between the working combat squads of various settlements: they actively helped each other and shared the captured weapons. The seizure of weapons belonging to the authorities assumed more and more wide scope. So, the workers of Avdiivka managed to seize a whole carload of cartridges and dynamite, and the Avdiivka comradely shared with the vigilantes of other stations.
Many explosives were seized for the upcoming battles by the workers of Debaltsev. "During the uprising, 146 pounds of dynamite and 8 pounds of gunpowder were plundered at the Debaltsevo station. Checkers and revolvers were taken from all Debaltsevo gendarmes. They tried to arrest and disarm me," Lieutenant Colonel Pakhalovich reported.

Finally, the workers even got ... artillery. Back in 1896, for firing on parade days, by order of the authorities, a home-made cannon was made from wagon axles in the railway workshops in Grishin. In the December days, the working squad in Grishin adapted this cannon for fighting with the troops. In the absence of shells, the workers fired lead from this cannon. In addition, dozens of bombs, gunpowder, dynamite, etc. were seized by the workers.
To provide themselves with the means for the uprising, the workers seized the station cash desks. As police officer Fedorenko telegraphed, "Debaltseve station employees detained the artel worker with 20,000 rubles, forced the money to be returned to the station cash desk in order to spend their needs during a further strike. Guards were assigned to the cash desk" (from the workers. - M.K.).
Thus was the preparation of the Donetsk workers for an armed uprising and for a grand offensive against the tsarist troops, which broke out in mid-December 1905.

By the beginning of the uprising, the workers’ fighting squads completely ousted and expelled the police, gendarmerie and authorities, not only along the Ekaterininsky road, which was captured even earlier, but also in many villages and stations, becoming the undivided masters of the situation in them. A brief telegram from police chief Fedorenko quite clearly depicts the situation in a number of districts by mid-December:
"Debaltseve, Yasinovataya, Avdeevka, Grishino, combat squads settled down, which were joined by the peasants of neighboring villages. The troops could not unite in any way to take the squads. The telephone was cut off. Many police officers were disarmed."
The first battle of the workers' squads with the tsarist troops took place in Yasinovataya. It was provoked by the military authorities themselves, who decided to start the defeat of the combat squads from this station, as the weakest and least prepared.

The Yasinovatsky workers were indeed armed and organized worse than others. The local workers had almost no weapons, and the commander of the 12th company of the Balaklava regiment stationed here, staff captain Karamyshev, decided to take advantage of this. On the morning of December 13, having gathered the workers, he announced to them that the station and the entire region were henceforth under increased security and that they were "forbidden" to "any gatherings." A huge crowd of excited workers gathered around him. ordered the soldiers to disperse her with rifle butts.

An hour later, the strike committee and the fighting squad of Yasinovataya sent a telegram to the nearest squads with a call for help. (The armed work squads of neighboring stations responded with lightning speed. And on the same day, combat squads from Grishin and Avdiivka, headed by Comrade Deinega, arrived in Yasinovataya in special trains. Commander Karamyshev. The officer brazenly ordered the soldiers to open fire on the workers, for which he was immediately shot by combatants. The soldiers, in the majority, went over to the side of the workers, giving them their 54 rifles.

This was the first and, moreover, a really major military victory for the workers' squads. It unusually raised the morale of the workers, strengthened the organization and the influx of workers into the fighting squads. The vigilantes returned to Grishino in triumph and were solemnly greeted by all the working people as heroes.

The first military victory of the workers' squads inspired them to further attack the tsarist troops. In Avdiivka, on December 14, after friendship, the elite units of the tsarist army galloped away from Avdiivka in disgrace.

Fighting squads from the first day began violently. The Bakhmut police officer after the battle in Yasinovataya in a panic telegram to the governor demanded that troops be sent from the Don region: "I ask you to withdraw 5 companies of the Don region, the situation of the county is the most critical."

And reinforced Cossack and dragoon units were moved to Yasinovataya and Grishino. In response, the Grishins began to erect barricades. In the shortest possible time, literally in a few hours, wire fences and embankments appeared. They were made not only by workers, but by all residents of the village of Grishina. The strike committee developed a plan of fighting with the Cossacks in order to prevent the armed force from occupying the station.

Meanwhile, the authorities were preparing a blow to another revolutionary point in the Donbass - Gorlovka. Here the situation was especially dangerous for the government. A Bolshevik organization was working in Gorlovka, to which Comrade was sent from Enakievo by the Bolshevik organization there. Tkachenko-Petrenko. Thanks to the work of the Bolshevik organization in Gorlovka, to a greater extent than in other places, it was possible to unite the forces of workers - both metalworkers and railway workers, and miners. There was a political strike, they declared it jointly, they also prepared for battles together.

This was well known to the authorities who sent the largest number of troops here.

But despite the strong workers' organization in Gorlovka, a large workers' district, power continued to remain almost entirely in the hands of the old administration. For the same reason, there were not enough armed workers' squads here. Even before the start of the strike, a team of 100 dragoons was stationed in Gorlovka, and with the start of the strike, another company of infantry was sent here. The police are looking for an opportunity to decapitate the workers' movement by arresting their leaders. For one of them, Kuznetsov, a real police hunt is organized. The workers guard him all the time from police raids by a specially assigned detachment, and wherever Kuznetsov goes, he is constantly guarded by 15 to 20 armed guards.
At the same time as all the workers, the metalworkers of the Gorlovsky Machine-Building Plant also went on strike. And when, on their behalf, Kuznetsov went to make demands on the director of the plant, Loest, the police ambushed him. Kuznetsov with a group of workers is negotiating with. Loest; the latter, contrary to the tactics of "concessions" of other masters, was adamant. Then the workers announced to him that he was under arrest and stood guard at his door. But Loest had already warned the police in advance. The building is instantly cordoned off by the police, the courtyard is occupied by Cossacks and dragoons. In this situation, Kuznetsov, together with the delegation, went out to the striking workers who had gathered at the gates of the factory. The dragoons stop the workers who are trying to break into the factory yard, and the bailiff Nemirovsky offers them to extradite Kuznetsov, tries to break into the crowd, in which, surrounded and protected by a human wall, is Kuznetsov. But the bailiff is immediately thrown back by the workers.

Then the execution of workers by dragoons begins. Kuznetsov is wounded in the hand and, under the cover of a loyal worker's guard, manages to leave the factory. The police nevertheless found Kuznetsov bleeding in the hospital, where his comrades had brought him. Almost before the eyes of the police, Kuznetsov's hand was taken away, after which he was immediately arrested and taken to prison.
After the execution of the workers and the arrest of the leader, fury and anger seized the working masses. It was unanimously decided to give battle to the troops, the police and to expel the troops from the Donbass. But Gorlovka is still poorly armed. And that same evening, like the Yasinovatists, the workers of Gorlovka sent a call from the Gorlovka strike committee by telegraph along the entire line.
Each village, each station received the following telegram: "Combat squad. We are all without weapons, we demand immediate help from all sides. Committee."
All the workers' committees and fighting squads responded decisively to the appeal of the Gorlovtsy. In Enakievo, Grishin, Yuzov, Avdeevka, Verovka, Druzhkovka, and in dozens of other places, combat squads hastily loaded into specially formed trains. Where there was not yet a combat squad, the workers hastily armed themselves with anything: iron rods, sticks, axes, knives, daggers - and also boarded the trains. Echelons of vigilantes passed station after station, and at each station more and more detachments and groups of armed workers landed.

In total, three trains were sent to Gorlovka, chock-full of variously armed workers. Two trains arrived, the third got stuck on the way. It was a train with armed workers from that same Verovsko mine, the combat work of which we spoke about above. As soon as they received a telegram, they went to Yenakiyevo, and from there - by train to Gorlovka, but the path turned out to be already taken apart by the Cossacks. But the Druzhkovka miners managed to slip through and bring with them a whole carload of various weapons, which were immediately distributed to the workers.

With revolutionary songs and red flags, combatants raced in trains to Gorlovka to help their comrades. Two trains, crowded with vigilante workers from all over the Donbass, arrived on the night of December 17 in Gorlovka.
This was the first All-Donetsk "gathering" of fighting squads, but the "gathering" was not for conferences, but for a battle with the hated autocracy. Many arrived unarmed, but they were rescued by the Druzhkovites, and besides, on the same night, representatives sent a second time for weapons returned from Taganrog, who also brought rifles and revolvers. All these weapons were immediately distributed to the assembled warriors. In one of the station rooms, an operational meeting of the commanders of the gathered squads took place. The plan of attack on the barracks of the troops stationed in Gorlovka was discussed. The squads were divided into separate detachments, detachment commanders, general command, communications, etc. were allocated. They tried to foresee every little thing.
By 8 o'clock in the morning on December 17, the squads completed the grouping and alignment of their forces. It is difficult to establish exactly how many warriors arrived in Gorlovka and whether the Group of arrested participants took part in the uprising in Aleksandrovsk (now Zaporozhye) in 1905, in the famous attack on the tsarist troops. According to official police reports, up to 4,000 vigilante workers attacked the troops - this was a whole army, the first revolutionary workers' army. But of these, only about 300 people were armed with rifles and hunting rifles, and a small part of the combatants had revolvers, while the rest had the so-called "cold weapons", which meant not so much sabers and daggers as home-made pikes, iron rods, axes, knives etc.

Immediately after the end of the operational meeting of the commanders of combat squads, at 8 o'clock in the morning, three detachments went on the offensive against the barracks. One of them, best supplied with rifles, guns and revolvers, occupied minefield structures, overpasses and rock heaps. The other two detachments were deployed in the courtyards, opposite the barracks, behind the fences, and were the first to open fire, concentrating the enemy's attention and fire on themselves in order to enable the first, most heavily armed detachment to attack the troops.
The commander of the Gorlovsky garrison, Captain Ugrinovich, had already been warned by someone. The troops met the combatants also in full combat readiness. They occupied all the windows and exits.
It was a frosty December morning. The weather was clearly unfavorable for the workers: there was frequent light snow, which soon turned into a blizzard. When the combatants opened fire on the windows of the barracks, it was still dark. From three sides, they stubbornly fired at the troops who had taken refuge there, who fired back through the windows and fences of the barracks.

The battle lasted about two hours, after which the troops retreated, unable to withstand the fire of the fighting squads. Their imperceptible departure from the barracks was facilitated by a blizzard. The troops hastily left Gorlovka and fled to Yenakiyevo. When the workers noticed the flight of the dragoons and soldiers, it was already too late, they rushed to pursue the retreating, but because of the snowstorm they could not see anything.
A new victory, moreover, a huge one, incomparably greater than it was in Yasinovataya and Avdiivka, was won by the worker combatants. True, this victory was very short-lived: the forces of the workers, even with such a huge number of vigilantes, were still too insufficient and poorly armed.
The retreating troops united with a hundred Cossacks coming from Enakievo, who had been called earlier to help the military authorities. Dismounting, the Cossacks went around through the Ksenievka farm to the Gorlovka station, in the building of which, under the command of Deinega, at that time there were about 300 - 400 warriors from among the most poorly armed (the most armed detachments went on the offensive against the barracks). Part of the detachments still continued shelling the barracks, in which a group of soldiers with the bailiff Nemirovsky at the head remained who did not have time to retreat, others advanced far into the steppe, pursuing the retreating troops. Because of the blizzard and the great dispersion of the workers' squads, they could no longer unite again. The most armed detachments could not unite with the Cossacks who remained at the station for a joint rebuff, they could not even help their comrades who were in the station building.

In the meantime, the Cossacks and the returning dragoons and soldiers, having surrounded the station, opened the fiercest fire on the warriors who had settled there.
Now the warriors were locked up, and the Cossacks and soldiers besieged them. But while the soldiers "besieged in the barracks were well armed, the combatants locked up by them did not even have this. The combatants fearlessly defended themselves, but soon the commander of the Deynega detachment was seriously wounded and died of a hemorrhage. The Cossacks came close to the walls of the station.
The workers from the detachments besieging the barracks, hearing the shots, rushed to the station to help their besieged comrades, but they could not help, because because of the snowstorm they fired mostly at random. Because of the snowstorm, the vigilantes of another detachment, who were in the field, could not approach the station in any way. Thus, the workers were isolated from each other. The lack of military experience and knowledge ruined them. Noticing the confusion among the combatants who had settled at the station, Captain Ugrinovich suggested that they surrender on "special conditions": lay down their arms and go through the line of soldiers. The guards refused. They also rejected more "soft" terms of surrender. Then Captain Ugrinovich began to threaten with the total execution of all combatants. In response to the threats, the combatants decided, with weapons in their hands, to break through to the train that was standing not far from the mines, completely ready for departure.
The sortie of the combatants was so unexpected that the troops could not prevent them from boarding the train. Under the bullets of the Cossacks, on the move, jumping into the cars, the combatants left Gorlovka.
At five o'clock in the evening Gorlovka surrendered. About 300 vigilante workers were killed in these heroic battles, about the same number were taken prisoner. The remaining combatants managed to leave Gorlovka and go home.
Despite the "victory", the troops hurried to leave Gorlovka as soon as possible, where, in their words, "every stone shoots": they feared a new attack.
The defeat of the workers in the Battle of Gorlovka decided the fate of the entire uprising in the Donbass. The combatants returned home, partly in trains, partly on foot, and most of them were already without weapons. Grishinsky and Avdeevites, who returned home in an organized manner, with weapons in their hands, hid him in safe places until the "next battle" with the tsarist-capitalist system.
Until December 21, the Gorlovka station was still in the hands of the workers. The troops did not shoal back to Gorlovka. And only after making sure that the uprising was over, that Gorlovka was deserted, an influx of troops and punitive detachments began to enter it and other areas of the Donbass, carrying out bloody trials and reprisals against the temporarily defeated workers.

Three years later, in December 1908, the participants in the uprising and the seizure of the Catherine's railway were tried. A grandiose process took place, the peculiarity of which was that almost all the participants in the uprising, who were free during these years, were, at the insistence of Stolypin, arrested and put on trial. People began to be arrested wherever they could, they were taken straight from work to prison. 179 people were judged at once. The verdict then shocked all of Russia: 32 people were sentenced to death, 12 to indefinite, life hard labor, about 50 people were also sentenced to hard labor for various terms.
Unforgettable are those lofty examples of proletarian heroism shown by the advanced workers, participants in the Gorlovka battle. Eight of the Donbass proletarian revolutionaries sentenced to hanging, led by the Bolshevik Tkachenko-Petrenko, refused to sign a request to the tsar for pardon. For more than a month, the authorities delayed the execution of the sentence, seeking "repentance" of the convicts. “We are 28 people (including 8 suicide bombers. - M.K.) did not join the undertaking (to sign a request to the tsar. - M.K.) and remained in our opinion ... We prefer to be tortured or be shot, than to become traitors and traitors to our workers' cause. Oh no! Our enemies will not wait for this," Tkachenko wrote in his suicide letter.
Thus ended the uprising of the Donetsk workers. Although it took place in a more organized and amicable way than the uprisings in other areas of Russia, nevertheless, it suffered the same fate. Isolated from other centers of the uprising, weakly connected with the peasant movement, poorly armed, the workers' army could not win the battle. But in the lessons of the uprising in the Donbass, as well as other uprisings of 1905-1907, the revolution learned to win. And after 13 - 14 years, the Donetsk workers, under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party, showed in the civil war that they had learned not only to fight and attack, but also to win.

https://prometej.info/blog/istoriya/vosstavshij-donbass/ - full link

PS. It is quite natural that such a prehistory led to the fact that after the October Revolution, a workers' Donetsk-Krivoy Rog Republic arose in the Donbass, headed by Stalin's friend, comrade Artem. The DKR played a big role in the defeat of Ukrainian bourgeois nationalism in Ukraine and the preservation of Ukraine as part of Soviet Russia.
Therefore, the hatred of Ukrainian nationalists for the Donbass is historically conditioned not only by their recent defeats, but by the events of a century ago, when workers and miners, who started with local uprisings, created their own republic, which torpedoed the attempts of Ukrainian nationalists to create a full-fledged "Anti-Russia" on the territory of the former territories of the Russian Empire.

Revolution of 1905 - 1907 created favorable conditions for the formation of many political parties, both Russian and national. All of them in those years acted quite legally. By the end of the revolution, their number, together with the parties that had previously arisen illegally, reached over 50. They represented a very wide range of social, national and even religious interests expressed in their programs. All political parties can be reduced to three main classification groups:

1) revolutionary democratic parties (social democratic and neo-populist),
2) liberal opposition (mainly the parties of the Russian and national liberal bourgeoisie, as well as the liberal intelligentsia),
3) conservatively protective (right-wing bourgeois-landowner and clerical-monarchist, Black Hundreds).

Among the parties of the first group, the leading role was played by those that arose at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP) and the Party of Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs).

As indicated above, the RSDLP took organizational shape at its II Congress (1903) and at the same time it split into Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. However, formally (until March 1917) both of them continued to be considered as members of the same party.

Features of the economic and social development of the region during the First World War

The outbreak of the First World War affected the entire empire, including the Donbass. Although this region remained deep in the rear, military changes took place here very abruptly. Since the standard of living of the population began to fall, some of the enterprises focused on peaceful needs went bankrupt. On the other hand, military enterprises sharply increased their output, bringing super profits to their owners. New defense enterprises began to be built in the region. For example, in May 1916, near Yuzovka, the construction of a branch of the capital's Putilov plant began, and in the autumn the plant produced its first products - artillery shells. The working settlement that arose around was called Putilovka. A hospital and a school were immediately built here. Although today it is a region of Donetsk, but then between the village and Yuzovka there was a bare steppe. Only ten years later, Putilovka was officially included in the city.

In addition, the inevitable tightening of working conditions in military conditions and a decrease in income led to increased discontent and an increase in protest moods.

Although specialists from defense factories could get a deferment from being drafted into the army, many Donbass people went to the front, which created a shortage of workers. For example, after the mobilization of 1914, factories lost 30% of their workers, and mines - up to 50%. Those who went to war were partially replaced by women and teenagers, but there were jobs that required exclusively male power. Entrepreneurs soon found a way out of the situation by starting to import Chinese into the region, and soon thousands of narrow-eyed men were working in the Donbass. Disenfranchised, submissive and hard-working, they were ready to work in the mines for practically a penny and did not even think of organizing strikes and strikes, unlike their local colleagues. In addition, some enterprises used prisoners of war as labor force. In 1916, an idea appeared to bring Persian workers to Russia, but because of the revolution, it was not implemented. Of course, the new workers were inferior in professionalism to those mobilized, but nevertheless, with their help, the industry of the region withstood the military difficulties.

By the way, during the war the number of proletarians of Donbass even increased. So, if in 1914 there were 186,000 miners in the Donbass, then in 1916 - 247,000, the number of metallurgists increased from 55,000 to 75,000 people. On the whole, the number of industrial workers rose from 262,000 in 1913 to 370,000 in 1916. This is not surprising, given that the products of the Donbass enterprises were vital to the front.

By the way, our region gave the country not only coal and steel. More than forty percent of all cartridges of the Russian Empire were produced at the Lugansk Cartridge Plant.

Donetsk nitrogen

Although Donbass was known primarily for its coal and metal, other types of industries were not forgotten here either. For example, the first nitrogen plant in the empire was opened here, in Yuzovka, in February 1917.

In general, after the outbreak of the First World War in the Donbass, the rapid development of the chemical industry began, the products of which were mainly for military needs.

The fact was that until 1914, part of the chemical raw materials necessary for the production of explosives was practically not produced in Russia. For example, toluene, which was needed to create TNT for artillery shells, was produced mainly from crude benzene supplied by Germany. Naturally, after the start of the war, our industry was left without benzene, and six months later our artillery was left without ammunition. I had to urgently establish the production of toluene at domestic enterprises.

Donbass was a very promising region in this regard, as more than six thousand coking ovens of various capacities operated here, of which 1268 (located at 13 plants) were adapted to partially capture coking by-products. True, since the main goal of the entrepreneurs was coke, the use of coking by-products was not very developed. Most of these furnaces gave only cheap products: ammonium sulphate, ammonia, coal tar, etc. Only at the factories in Yenakiyevo, Bayrak and Shcherbinsky they produced the benzene, toluene and anthracene needed by the military industry.

In July 1914, a commission was sent to the Donbass to study the possibility of obtaining raw materials in the process of coking coal, but it turned out that it was impossible to start production in a short time. At that time, an attempt was made to start buying toluene in America, but there was not enough of this substance produced there. I had to urgently organize the production of benzene and toluene at domestic enterprises.

In the autumn of 1914, a new commission headed by Professor V.N. Ipatiev. The capital's chemists developed a plan for organizing the production of the required raw materials at existing coking plants and specially built new benzene plants. On February 6, 1915, an official structure was created called the "Commission for the Procurement of Explosives", headed by professors Ipatiev and Fokin.

The first company with which cooperation was established was Olivier Piett, a company from Makeyevka, at whose plant a unit for capturing crude benzene was built. The same company was supposed to build a distillation plant for benzene fractionation. Evans Koppe from Yuzovka also received a contract for the production of benzene.

Then, in the town of Kadievka (modern Stakhanov, Lugansk region), a state-owned benzene plant was built, designed to produce 200,000 pounds of raw benzene per year and working on raw materials from the coke ovens of the South Dnieper Society located here. On August 20, 1915, the plant went into operation. The successful opening of the Makeevka and Kadievsky plants showed the profitability of the coke-benzene industry to businessmen, and private entrepreneurs began to open such enterprises themselves.

At the same time, the construction of three chemical enterprises began at Rubezhnoye station at once: the Russko-Kraska chemical dye plant, the plant of the Koksobenzen joint-stock partnership, and the explosives plant of the Russian Partnership for the Production and Sale of Gunpowder.

In the terrible year of 1914, the young scientist Ivan Ivanovich Andreev found a way to obtain nitric acid in a fundamentally new way - by oxidizing ammonia in the presence of a catalyst. This was supposed to reduce the cost of this important product by three and a half times compared to acid made in the traditional way from saltpeter. To test the idea in practice, the inventor went to Makeevka, where a pilot plant for the production of acid was built at the local coke plant. Convinced of the efficiency of his method, Andreev in the spring of 1916 began the construction of the Nitrogen Plant in Yuzovka, which went into operation in less than a year.

By the way, during these years, the chemists of the region supplied the military department not only with components for explosives, but also with full-fledged chemical weapons. So, in Slavyansk, at the plant of the "South Russian Society for the manufacture and sale of soda" in 1915, the production of liquid chlorine was established by electrolysis of table salt on carbon electrodes, followed by liquefaction. The same poisonous substance was produced by the Lyubimov, Solvay and Co., whose plant was located in Lisichansk. Moreover, in addition to chlorine, phosgene was also produced in Lisichansk. These two enterprises produced most of all chemical weapons used by the Russian army in the First World War.

So at the beginning of the 20th century, Donbass became the leader not only in the metallurgical, but also in the chemical industry of the country.

Before the war, almost 90% of the workers in Donbass were men over 16 years old.