Greens

Greens, political faction: see Blues and Greens.

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Greens 

originally the name given to those who evaded military service, mainly in the White armies, during the Civil War of 1918–20 in Soviet Russia. They acquired their name from the fact that they hid in forests. This phenomenon became widespread in the summer of 1918, when the White Guards began to mobilize the population by force. In response to terror and repression, Greens from among the workers and peasants formed partisan detachments known as Red-Greens, which operated behind White lines, mainly in the Northern Caucasus, Dagestan, and the Crimea, and which numbered about 15,000 fighters in the summer of 1919. In the Kuban’region and on the Northern Black Sea Shore the Green movement was led by underground Novorossiisk and Ekaterinodar party committees, and in the Northern Caucasus, by the Caucasian regional (krai) committee of the RCP (Bolshevik). The activity of the Red-Greens on the Black Sea coast of the Caucasus intensified at the end of 1919 and beginning of 1920. In January and February 1920, the Green Soviet Army (in the Novorossiisk-Tuapse region) and the Black Sea Peasant Militia (in the Adler-Sochi region) liberated almost the entire northeastern part of the Black Sea coast. In March 1920, they united to form the Red Army of the Black Sea (about 12,000 men), whose Military Revolutionary Council was headed by Communists. The Red Army of the Black Sea was later incorporated into the Red Army. The White Guard command formed White-Green detachments behind Red Army lines, composed chiefly of kulak bands and remnants of White troops. These detachments did not as a rule find support among the population and were destroyed by the Red Army.

REFERENCES

Istoriia grazhdanskoi voiny v SSSR, vol. 4. Moscow, 1959.
Kakurin, N. E. Kak srazhalas’ revoliutsiia, vol. 1. Moscow-Leningrad, 1925.
Favitskii, V. “Zelenaia armiia v Chernomor’e.” Proletarskaia revoliutsiia, 1924, nos. 8–9.

I. K. RYBALKA