Strekopytov Revolt

an anti-Soviet armed uprising conducted by members of a garrison and local counterrevolutionaries in Gomel’ between Mar. 24 and Mar. 29, 1919. The 67th and 68th regiments of the Second (Tula) Brigade of the Red Army’s Eighth Rifle Division were incited to revolt by a counterrevolutionary underground organization, the Poles’e Insurrection Committee. The conspirators took advantage of discontent among some of the soldiers (mainly those who were peasants) over the shortage of food and other wartime difficulties. A former tsarist ensign, M. A. Strekopytov, headed the revolt. On March 24 the rebels seized Gomel’, Strekopytov established a personal dictatorship, and White terror and arbitrary rule reigned in the city. On March 29, Red Army and workers’ detachments approached the rebels and routed them. Strekopytov, along with some of his supporters, fled to Poland and then to Estonia, to the army of General N. N. Iudenich.