Alexander Stepanovich Antonov, who led the peasant uprising in the Tambov province in 1920-1921, was born on August 8 (July 26 in the old style) 1889 in Moscow. His father, Stepan Gavrilovich Antonov, was a retired feldwebel from the merchant class of Tambov province, and his mother, Natalia Ivanovna, worked as a seamstress. Alexander was the third child in the family, with older sisters Valentina and Anna. Soon after his birth, the family moved to Kirsanov, where his father opened a locksmith workshop. Around 1891, Alexander had a younger brother, Dmitry, who later became his comrade.

Alexander studied at a real school in Tambov but was expelled for distributing revolutionary literature of the Social Revolutionaries. He completed only five grades and then became an apprentice carpenter in railway repair workshops. At 16, he joined the Social Revolutionary Party and participated in expropriations during the 1905 revolution, including the robbery of a postal train. For this, he was wanted by the police. In Saratov, he agreed to assassinate Lieutenant General Alexander Sandetsky but was arrested in February 1909. The court sentenced him to hang, but Pyotr Stolypin commuted the sentence to hard labor.

After two unsuccessful escape attempts in 1910, Antonov was sent to the Shlisselburg Fortress. In March 1917, after the February Revolution, he was amnestied and returned to Tambov, where he began working in the militia. He successfully fought crime and disarmed several trains of the Czechoslovak Corps, for which he received an award.

In 1918, after the Left Socialist Revolutionary uprising, the communists began to oust the Social Revolutionaries from power. Antonov, learning of the arrest of his aides, went to Samara to join the fight against the Bolsheviks, but soon the Komuch was dispersed. Returning to the Kirsanov district, he found that peasant uprisings had begun. Local communists declared him the leader of the uprising and sentenced him to death in absentia.

At the end of 1918, Antonov gathered a small 'combat detachment' and began fighting the communists. By the summer of 1919, his squad had grown to 150 people. In August, the peasants of the village of Kamenskaya defeated a food detachment, and Antonov declared himself their leader. Thus began the 'Antonovshchina,' the last peasant war in Russia.

By 1920, Antonov had created about 20 rebel regiments, uniting them into two armies with a total of around 50,000 people. He engaged in active combat against the Red Army, employing guerrilla warfare tactics. Antonov showed cruelty not only to enemies but also to his own people, introducing corporal punishment to maintain discipline.

The uprising peaked in February 1921, but began to wane after the abolition of grain requisitioning. In the summer, repressions began against peasants who did not surrender their weapons. Troops under the command of Mikhail Tukhachevsky were brought in to suppress the uprising. By the summer of 1921, the uprising was crushed.

On June 24, 1922, Alexander Antonov and his brother Dmitry were killed in a battle with Chekists in the village of Nizhny Shibryai.