Turning the pages back...

June 6, 1829

In 1817, the tsarist imperial army decided to save money by settling garrisons in eastern and southern Ukraine's Kherson, Katerynoslav and Slobidska Ukraine gubernias and designating the local peasantry living there as "military settlers."

This designation visited the worst aspects of serfdom and the harshest conditions of military life on the local population. All aspects of their lives (including marriage and having children) were placed under strict regimentation and monitoring by martinets from the local units.

They were forced to wear uniforms and give over three days of their week's labor to farming and construction for the state, while boys were to be taken to military schools at age 7, and then kept in military service from 18 to 45.

It took a scant two years for the first rebellion to erupt, in the Chuhuyiv and Tahanrih regiments, and it was put down brutally amidst an orgy of whippings with the infamous "knout."

The most famous insurrection began on June 6, 1829, when about 3,000 peasants rose in a revolt against the military in the Shebelynka sloboda (approximately 50 miles south of Kharkiv), led by Stepan Diomin and Kiril Vedernikov.

The rebellion was brutally crushed five days later. Over 100 were killed and 143 were tried by a military tribunal. The two leaders were sentenced to hard labor for life, and 48 others were deported to other gubernias.

The harsh absurdities of the system persisted for another two decades, involving up to one-half of the Russian empire's military forces, but eventually its economic inefficiency led the hidebound imperialist army to abandon the practices of military settlement in 1857.

Sources: "Military settlements," "Shebelynka rebellion," Encyclopedia of Ukraine, Vols. 3, 4 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993).

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, June 2, 1996, No. 22, Vol. LXIV

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