Black Eagle

"Down with the communists and the Civil War! Long live the Constituent Assembly!"

- Black Eagle The Black Eagle Rebels were a group of peasant rebels in the Ufa Governorate (present-day Tatarstan and Bashkortostan), in southwestern Russian formed in February, 1920. The rebels, armed mostly with improvised weapons such as pitchforks and axes, resisted forced food confiscations by the new Soviet Regime. The rebellion started when the peasants overrun and killed a number of Red Army troops sent to seize crops from them. The peasants then assassinated multiple pro-Soviet officials in Menzelinsk and Zainsk, with the uprising eventually spreading to parts of the Kazan and Samara governorates, with rebels forming a cohesive organization under I. Milovanov, declaring themselves in support of the more Consituent Assembly, a more moderate socialist opposition to the Bolsheviks. The rebels numbered over 50,000 men.

In Mid-March, 1920, the Red Army retaliated, crushing the lightly armed peasants with artillery and machine guns, killing 3000 rebels and burning down villages. In spite of their mostly improvised weaponry, the Black Eagle rebels managed to kill 800 Red Army soldiers before they were put down.