"Northern mobile squad" and the Samara Krasnoggardeysky squad: their role in the literation of armed confrontation in the South Urals

The article discusses the role of the leadership of the Soviet state and local authorities in the unleashing of an armed confrontation in the southern Urals. The author notes that the acute political crisis that arose at the end of 1917 could have been resolved by peaceful means. Instead of that, the leadership of the Chelyabinsk organization of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), which failed to retain power in its hands, appealed for help from the center and the neighboring work centers for armed assistance. According to the decision of the CPC, the so-called Northern mobile Squad together with the workers from the Samara, Ufa and Perm gubernias, restored the Soviet power in Chelyabinsk. After that, following the instructions to eliminate the center of counter-revolution, the fighters of the «Northern Mobile Squad» and Samara detachments launched combat operations against the Cossack self-defense squads. The author analyzes how the confrontation grew and concentrates attention on the unreasonably harsh actions of the Red Guards. In conclusion, the author concludes that it at the end of 1917 - the beginning of 1918 that the Bolsheviks in the region initiated an outbreak of armed confrontation, which ended in May-June with a full-scale civil war.