Несентиментальное путешествие: письмо А. И. Тарасова-Родионова в Петроградское бюро ЦК РКП(б) о своей поездке в Сибирь летом 1918 г.

Abstract

The paper presents the letter from Bolshevik Alexander Ignatievich Tarasov-Rodionov, who later became a famous Soviet writer, to the top party leadership describing his journey from red Petrograd to white Tyumen and back across the front line in July — August 1918. Excluded from the party on the eve of his trip to Tyumen, Alexander Tarasov-Rodionov decided to use his trip as a way to regain the trust of party leadership by collecting and providing the latter with valuable information about the state of white rear. To this end, during his journey, he was interested in the course of hostilities, the political and economic situation in the white-occupied areas of the Volga region, the Urals and Western Siberia. The source of the information received by Tarasov-Rodionov was his own observations, materials from anti-Bolshevik newspapers and conversations with fellow travelers. The result of his observations on his return from the trip, he outlined in a detailed letter to the Petrograd Bureau of the Central Committee of the RCP(b), written on August 27, 1918. This letter is a valuable historical source on the initial period of the Civil War in the East of Russia, containing interesting information about the White terror, about everyday life in the White rear, as well as about the tactics of combat operations at the front, collected by the author at the risk of his life during his journey. To visualize the route of Tarasov-Rodionov’s journey, a schematic map was prepared, published in the appendix to the paper.