The Green armies were semi-organized local militias that opposed the Bolsheviks, Whites, and foreign interventionists, and fought to protect their communities from requisitions or reprisals carried out by third parties.

[21] Another source of the peasantry's rejection of the Bolsheviks was the abolition of the Committees of Poor Peasants or komitety bednoty (Russian: Комитеты Бедноты) in December 1918, but Lenin had foreseen fierce resistance and increased both the size of the prodotriady and the tax requirement.

[42] With their deeply reactionary positions[43] desire to restore the old Tsarist social and economic order[44] aggressive repression and rejection of the Peasant base [45] and refusal to carry out even basic reforms demanded by the circumstances [46] The Whites could not take advantage of the countryside's hesitance towards the Reds and win it for their cause.

[69] More likely to follow aggressive rhetoric and promises of violent revenge, peasants tended to reject leaders with purely political or more moderate goals, that is, any close to the Russian Provisional Government of 1917.

[25] At the beginning of 1920, when the Red victory was practically assured after the defeat of the armies of Anton Denikin, Nikolai Yudenich and Aleksandr Kolchak,[73] continued requisitioning came to be viewed as more and more unjustifiable.

[79] However, by that time both Greens and Blacks could only dream of damaging the Red Army, with its experience and size making it a true "military giant",[73] although their armed forces (undermined by desertions) never reached official figures.

Optimally disciplined, equipped and supplied, the force exerted less pressure on Rural areas by demanding less requisitions or levies and causing fewer peasant rebellions.

[75] In 1919, these fugitive "green deserters" numbered more than one million in the territory under Bolshevik control alone,[89] and although trace amounts went on to serve with the Whites, most fought in heavily wooded areas near their own homes against authorities from both sides.

[97] Their "trenches Bolshevism reflected above all an aspiration for peace, shared by the combatants of all the countries involved for three years in the most deadly and total wars.”[29] More than 2 million of their comrades had perished fighting the Central Powers.

[88] During the civil war, the desire for peace in the face of devastation led many communities to declare themselves "neutral republics" to prevent the red or White armies from entering their territories.

[104] The Bolshevik forces were militarily fragile, as proven after the Battle of Warsaw,[106] where Lenin's project to expand the revolution to Berlin or Budapest and then further west by military invasion was ultimately fruitless.

[83] Besides Soviet records of their oppositional activity, there is very little personal information about the Green leaders, described as "men who acted and wrote not" due to the widespread illiteracy and spontaneous nature of their movement[112] (85% of the population was illiterate in 1917).

[96] In order to build substantial forces, a motivated individual would lead a group of soldiers through the countryside, enlisting village inhabitants and deserters from the Red Army along the way.

By keeping the objectives simple, the recruitment indiscriminate, and the mood optimistic, Green leaders succeeded in provoking a sense among the peasants that they could make a significant dent in Bolshevik power.

The peasant soldiers of the Red Army, outraged at the prospect of continuing to violently oppress their own class in the interest of the new government, deserted and consolidated in groups in the forests, eventually leading to their "Green" designation.

[130] Probably the best known green movement is the rebellion that broke out on August 19, 1920 in the small town of Khitrovo, as a rejection of food requisitions in the Tambov Oblast and quickly spread to Penza, Saratov and Voronezh.

For instance, Aleksandr Antonov's Green army in Tambov had a medical staff, reinforcement brigades, and a complex system of communication and intelligence that employed women, children, and the elderly.

[132] Notable Green movements also developed in the regions of Novgorod, Tula, Ryazan, Tver, Voronezh, Kostroma, Syzran, Gomel, Kursk, Bryansk and Oryol, among many others.

[33] The Greens formed multitudes of peasants with clogs made of linden bark, they armed themselves with what they found: sticks, pitchforks, tridents, pikes, hoes, axes and clubs.

[162] During the Lenin and Stalin governments, to economically develop territories and punish potentially separatist peoples, numerous communities were starved, deported and replaced by Russian settlers.

"[164] Lenin admitted to imitating the tactics devised by François Babeuf, inventor of modern communism, who planned the "populicide" of Vendée,[165] which found its climax in the "infernal columns".

[185] Many were workers whose factories had closed,[186] others only migrated to exchange manufactured objects for food and return to the cities, they went in armed brigades on stolen trains, becoming uncontrollable for the Bolshevik authorities.

[199] They were accustomed to poor harvests and they overcame them by keeping communal reserves, but to avoid requisitions they reduced their production to mere survival, leaving them extremely vulnerable to bad weather conditions.

[203] As famine slowly exterminated the inhabitants of the Volga, Kama and Don river basins, of the Urals, Bashkortostan, Kazakhstan, Western Siberia and southern Ukraine,[200] Bolshevik authorities ordered the thousands who tried to save themselves by fleeing to the cities be forced to return to the fields, claiming that they carried contagious diseases with them.

[206] In the summer of 1922 the ARA fed eleven million people a day and brought medicines, clothes, tools and seeds that were essential to achieve two large harvests of 1922 and 1923, bringing Russia out of the famine.

[208] The gratitude of the Bolshevik government was translated into accusations to the ARA of attempting to discredit, spy on and shoot them down, interfering in their operations, searching their convoys, stopping their trains, stealing supplies and arresting members of assistance teams.

[206] However, the US aid was not canceled until it was made public that in full famine the Communist government continued to export millions of tons of its own cereals abroad, excusing itself from buying industrial and agricultural equipment.

A society of archaic and patriarchal life, where witchcraft was believed, time was divided by seasons and religious festivals instead of months, with pagan rituals and superstitions, beatings of wives, tumultuous law, fistfights and days of drunkenness.

[224] Only in 1927, after banishing, displacing or eliminating his main opponents and remaining safe as boss,[225] did Stalin put an end to the "peasant utopia" based on the "eserovschina" or "revolutionary socialist mentality".

[229] But this new movement could not federate or organize like the previous one, they had no capable leaders or political cadres (decimated during the civil war), had to fight with pitchforks and axes (firearms were progressively requisitioned during the 1920s) and the regime reacted too quickly.