The uprising began untimely, since the Extraordinary Commission by that moment had begun arresting the Moscow branch of the Union for the Defense of the Motherland and Freedom.

At the beginning of 1918, it was the most powerful anti–Soviet organization in Central Russia, with cells not only in Yaroslavl, but also in all large Upper Volga cities: Rybinsk, Murom, Kostroma.

[2] The choice of Yaroslavl as a stronghold for the uprising was due to a combination of several factors: The goals of the rebels were the elimination of the Bolshevik dictatorship, the restoration of political and economic freedoms, the convocation of the Constituent Assembly, the rupture of the Brest–Litovsk Peace and, with the help of Russia's allies in the Entente, the opening of a new Eastern Front against Germany and the Bolsheviks.

It is usually believed that the rebels hoped for help from the allies from the North (which was not received) and counted on the possibility of spreading the uprising to other cities in Central Russia and, as a result, everywhere, until the liberation of Moscow.

At the very beginning of the uprising, military specialists from among the officers, the auto–machine–gun detachment, the police and part of the personnel of the garrison went over to the side of the rebels.

At the beginning of the uprising, the rebels were practically unarmed – for 105 people there were only 12 different–caliber revolvers and the very possibility of a performance depended only on the capture of weapons from the enemy.

The rebels attacked the Red Army men guarding the warehouse from several sides, seized it and began to take away the weapons.

Thirty armed policemen were dispatched from the city to find out what was happening in the warehouse, as the telephone connection was interrupted, but they immediately joined the rebels.

Already by the morning, after a short battle, the Special Communist Detachment was completely disarmed and arrested, the Governor's House was captured, in which the Executive Committee and the Provincial Extraordinary Commission were located, the post office, telegraph, radio station and treasury were occupied.

About 200 Soviet and party workers (including delegates to the congress), communists and their supporters were arrested and placed on a barge, which was taken from the shore and anchored.

In Soviet historiography, it is noted that the expansion and spread of the uprising was largely facilitated by the indecision, which in the early days of the uprising was displayed by the local leadership of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army – the district military commissar Vasily Arkadiev and the military leader (former Tsarist general) Nikolai Liventsev.

The formation of the Northern Volunteer Army, subordinate to the high command of General Mikhail Alekseev, was announced, in the ranks of which about six thousand people signed up (of which 1600–2000 participated in the battles).

Detachments of the Red Guard and part of the "internationalists" (in particular, the Chinese, German and Austro–Hungarian prisoners of war) launched an offensive against Yaroslavl.

However, most of the commanders, being local residents, led by General Karpov, refused to leave the city and decided to continue the fight as long as possible.

As a result, it was decided to send for reinforcements a detachment of 50 people, led by Alexander Perkhurov, who left Yaroslavl on a steamer on the night of July 15–16, 1918.

The uprising was defeated due to weak organization, lack of weapons (which became the reason for the defensive strategy of the rebels), the numerical superiority of the Red forces and their intensive use of artillery and aviation.

It did not allow the Bolsheviks to transfer their reserves to the Volga and Ural Fronts, which led to heavy defeats of the Red troops and the capture of Yekaterinburg, Simbirsk and Kazan by anti–Bolshevik forces.

As historians have noted, the reason for this shift in emphasis in the naming of events in Yaroslavl was the ideological content of the concepts of "uprising" and "rebellion".

If Soviet historians endowed the "uprising" with the status of inevitability and objectivity, which in the context of Marxist methodology had a positive connotation, then the concept of "rebellion" was associated with anarchy, caprice, arbitrariness, and lawlessness of the actions carried out.

In the first half of 1918, there was still a persistent general belief in the illegality and temporality of the power of the Bolsheviks, which influenced the motives of the actions of the rebels.

The role of the conspiratorial officers from the Savinkov organization of the Union for the Defense of the Motherland and Freedom was significant only at the first moment of the movement's start.

In the future, many residents of the city turned out to be under the banners of the rebels, so the element of events significantly changed the original goals.The rebels arrested over 200 communists and workers of Soviet institutions; Chairman of the Provincial Executive Committee Semyon Nakhimson, Chairman of the Executive Committee of the City Council David Zakheim were killed, several dozen more Soviet workers were interned on the so–called "death barge", anchored in the middle of the Volga.

[15] The Newspaper Pravda called for revenge, having printed on July 14, 1918, that is, long before the Bolsheviks officially declared the Red Terror, the following appeal:[16] In Yaroslavl, by the rebellious White Guards were killed Dobrokhotov... Zacheim... Nahimson...

After the capture of Yaroslavl on July 21, 1918, a mass terror began in the city – the massacre of the rebels and residents of the city: on the very first day after the end of the uprising, 428 people transferred by Balk were shot (including the entire headquarters of the rebels – 57 people were shot),[17] mainly officers, students, cadets, lyceum students.

[17] In total, in the Yaroslavl province from March to November 1918, according to the far from complete data of Sergei Melgunov, the Bolshevik authorities shot 5,004 people.

On September 25, 1917, three barges, loaded with the most valuable weapons, other exhibits and archives, sailed from Petrograd, accompanied by Ensign Kuryshev and three gunners of the 1st Heavy Artillery Brigade, who selflessly tried to save funds from all military and revolutionary cataclysms.

In July 1918, the area of the Spassky Monastery, where the museum property was kept, became a battlefield, in the resulting fire, 55 boxes with banners and weapons were completely burned: a total of about 2,000 banners (including valuable, strelets), all trophies collected during the First World War war, 300 copies of old firearms and edged weapons.

The fire destroyed materials about the treatment of Alexander Pushkin after being wounded in a duel with Dantes, kept in the Zhuravsky family, descendants of Vladimir Dal, in whose arms the poet died.