 On campaign, the attached Cheka Special Punitive Brigades conducted summary field courts-martial and executions of deserters and slackers.Under Commissar Yan Karlovich Berzin the Special Punitive Brigades took hostages from the villages of deserters to compel their surrender; one in ten of those returning was executed.The same tactic also suppressed peasant rebellions in areas controlled by the Red Army, the biggest of these being the Tambov Rebellion.