“Revolutionary revolt” of the Black-Hundred peasantry: The 1914 unrest in Podolia

Abstract

The article considers the peasant riot that spread to several villages of the Podolsk Province in the spring of 1914. Those events were special, because the “troublemakers” were monarchist peasants influenced by the Black-Hundred Pochaev Union of the Russian People led by the Archimandrite Vitaly (Maksimenko). The fact that the peasant strike, protests against the zemstvo and other “revolutionary” manifestations were the result of the right-wing political agitation attracted special attention of local and central authorities. Based on the documents of Russian and Ukrainian archives and pre-revolutionary periodicals, the authors reconstruct in detail the peasant unrest in Podolia, its causes and consequences, focusing on the reaction of the provincial authorities, government bodies and special services, their attitude to the awakening peasant political activity. The authors argue that these issues, despite being particular cases, are vivid illustrations of complex relationship between the authorities and the Black Hundreds and allow to understand representations and moods of the peasantry in Right-Bank Ukraine, which joined en masse the Union of the Russian People in the early 20th century. This episode from the history of the peasant movement in the Podolsk Province explains why the former Black-Hundred peasants began to join the left-wing radical political movements and Ukrainian rebel groups during the 1917 Revolution and civil war.