Kandievka

a revolt by the peasants of Chembar and Kerensk districts of Penza Province and of Morshansk and Kirsanov districts of Tambov Province, in response to the peasant reform of 1861.

The Kandeevka uprising began on Apr. 1, 1861, with the refusal of the peasants of the villages of Chernogai and Studenki, in Chembar District, to work for the pomeshchiki (landlords). On April 2, in the same district, the peasants of the village of Vysokii declared that the true content of the Statutes of Feb. 19, 1861, was being concealed from them, and that they had supposedly transferred all the land of the pomeshchiki to the peasants wihout redemption payments, banished the steward, and removed the officials of the votchina (patrimonial estate) administration, replacing them with new officials elected from among the peasants. The unrest gripped 26 settlements and villages in the beginning of April. On April 10, armed with scythes and homemade pikes, the peasants of the village of Chernogai forced a company of soldiers to retreat. The village of Kandeevka (in other sources, Kandievka, Kandevka) in Kerensk District became the center of the Kandeevka uprising. The retired soldiers Gavrila Strel’tsov, Anton Tikhonov, and Andrei Elizarov and the peasant Leontii Egortsev led the Kandeevka uprising. On April 18, soldiers fired on a crowd of 10, 000 in Kandeevka, and 19 peasants were killed. A tsarist court convicted 174 participants; 114 of them were sentenced to hard labor and deportation to Siberia. The antiserfdom mood of the peasants was manifested in the Kandeevka uprising and in the Bezdna uprising of 1861.