The Russian Civil War in brief. Russian Civil War (1917–1922) Civil Revolution in 1922

The article briefly tells about the Civil War of 1917-1922. The war became the greatest tragedy in Russian history, bringing enormous casualties and destruction. As a result of the civil war, the direction of Russia's development radically changed.

1. Introduction
2. Progress of the Civil War 1917-1922

Causes of the Civil War of 1917-1922

• The roots of the Civil War were laid at the beginning of the 20th century. A tense situation has developed in Russia due to the virtually powerless situation of the peasantry and the unbearable conditions of the workers. The rapid development of industry required an ever greater intensification of labor, which was achieved by increasing the workload on workers. Under these conditions, the revolutionary movement grew, at the forefront of which was the Bolshevik Party. The First World War significantly aggravated the accumulated contradictions and led first to the February and then to the October revolutions.
• The new government’s brutal measures to suppress counter-revolutionary protests, massive repressions against political opponents and the imposition of exorbitant taxes on the peasantry led to the emergence of several large centers of resistance throughout the country. The leaders of the emerging white movement sought to restore the overthrown political system and their dominant position. He was joined by part of the wealthy peasantry, suffering from the policies of the new government.
• Balance of power
• The country was in a deep economic crisis. The Bolshevik army lacked weapons and food. However, the slogans of the communists had great propaganda value. The population treated the Bolsheviks with greater sympathy. The Bolshevik leaders declared universal equality and rights. The white generals, even rejecting the restoration of the monarchy, could not put forward any real ideas that the people would follow. The officers did not take into account the changed situation, still did not hide their contempt for ordinary soldiers and announced the restoration of their privileges in the event of victory. People who were frightened by the Red Terror and therefore joined the white movement gradually became disillusioned with it and went over to the side of the Reds.

Progress of the Civil War 1917-1922

• The first stage of the Civil War (1917-early 1918) is characterized by the emergence of the first centers to fight the Bolsheviks (Volunteer Army on the Don and A. Dutov’s troops in Orenburg). From the very beginning, the population is reluctant to join the ranks of the resistance. The Bolsheviks easily suppress the uprisings.
• In 1918-early 1919 The civil war flares up with renewed vigor. Other states intervene in the war. The stage of military intervention in Russia begins. At the end of the spring of 1918, the Czechoslovak Corps, located in Siberia, rebelled. As a result, Soviet power finds itself surrounded on all sides: the Provisional Siberian Government led by Kolchak was created in the east, the Volunteer Army under the command of Denikin operated in the south, and the troops of General Miller fought in the north.
• The advance of the white movement on all fronts threatened the existence of the young Soviet state. In this situation, Lenin showed himself to be a brilliant organizer. The mobilization of all forces and means, the promotion of talented military leaders to command posts allowed the Soviet troops to contain the attacks and then launch a counteroffensive. Of primary importance was the eastern front, where the main forces were sent. The unpopularity of the white movement caused a widespread rise in the partisan movement in Kolchak’s rear. He moves on to retreat. By the beginning of 1920, the Bolsheviks were victorious on the eastern front. Kolchak was shot.
• In the fall of 1919, the Bolsheviks won a victory in the north over General Yudenich, who replaced Miller.
• Volunteer Army until mid. 1919 develops a successful offensive. However, in the fall, the Red Army seizes the initiative and ultimately drives the remnants of the Volunteer Army into Crimea.
• Throughout 1919, in connection with the victories of the Red Army and the subsequent mass movement in Western countries in support of Russia, there was a gradual evacuation of intervention troops.
• Thus, by the beginning of 1920, the Civil War was practically over. Until 1922, the last pockets of resistance were eliminated, mainly on the outskirts of the former Russian Empire.

Results of the Civil War of 1917-1922.

• As a result of the Civil War, the Russian economy suffered enormous damage. The country has lost a huge number of human lives. The victory of the Bolshevik Party meant a sharp turn in the development of the country. The new socialist course influenced the development of not only Russia, but the whole world.

The Civil War, which took place in Russia from 1917 to 1922, was a bloody event where brother went against brother in brutal carnage, and relatives took positions on opposite sides of the barricades. In this armed class clash on the vast territory of the former Russian Empire, the interests of opposing political structures, conventionally divided into “red and white,” intersected. This struggle for power took place with the active support of foreign states, which tried to extract their interests from this situation: Japan, Poland, Turkey, Romania wanted to annex part of Russian territories, and other countries - the USA, France, Canada, Great Britain hoped to receive tangible economic preferences.

As a result of such a bloody civil war, Russia turned into a weakened state, whose economy and industry were in a state of complete ruin. But after the end of the war, the country adhered to the socialist course of development, and this influenced the course of history throughout the world.

Causes of the Civil War in Russia

Civil war in any country is always caused by aggravated political, national, religious, economic and, of course, social contradictions. The territory of the former Russian Empire was no exception.

• Social inequality in Russian society accumulated over centuries, and at the beginning of the 20th century it reached its apogee, as workers and peasants found themselves in a completely powerless position, and their working and living conditions were simply unbearable. The autocracy did not want to smooth out social contradictions and carry out any significant reforms. It was during this period that the revolutionary movement grew, which managed to lead the Bolshevik party.
• Against the backdrop of the protracted First World War, all these contradictions intensified noticeably, which resulted in the February and October revolutions.
• As a result of the revolution in October 1917, the political system changed in the state, and the Bolsheviks came to power in Russia. But the overthrown classes could not come to terms with the situation and made attempts to restore their former dominance.
• The establishment of Bolshevik power led to the abandonment of the ideas of parliamentarism and the creation of a one-party system, which prompted the Cadets, Socialist Revolutionaries, and Mensheviks to fight Bolshevism, that is, the struggle between the “whites” and the “reds” began.
• In the fight against the enemies of the revolution, the Bolsheviks used undemocratic measures - the establishment of a dictatorship, repression, persecution of the opposition, and the creation of emergency bodies. This, of course, caused discontent in society, and among those dissatisfied with the actions of the authorities were not only the intelligentsia, but also the workers and peasants.
• The nationalization of land and industry caused resistance on the part of the former owners, which led to terrorist actions on both sides.
• Despite the fact that Russia ceased its participation in the First World War in 1918, there was a powerful interventionist group on its territory that actively supported the White Guard movement.

The course of the civil war in Russia

Before the start of the civil war, there were loosely connected regions on the territory of Russia: in some of them Soviet power was firmly established, others (southern Russia, Chita region) were under the authority of independent governments. On the territory of Siberia, in general, one could count up to two dozen local governments that not only did not recognize the power of the Bolsheviks, but were also at enmity with each other.

When the civil war began, then all residents had to decide whether to join the “whites” or the “reds”.

The course of the civil war in Russia can be divided into several periods.

First period: from October 1917 to May 1918

At the very beginning of the fratricidal war, the Bolsheviks had to suppress local armed uprisings in Petrograd, Moscow, Transbaikalia and the Don. It was at this time that a white movement was formed from those dissatisfied with the new government. In March, the young republic, after an unsuccessful war, concluded the shameful Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.

Second period: June to November 1918

At this time, a full-scale civil war began: the Soviet Republic was forced to fight not only with internal enemies, but also with invaders. As a result, most of Russian territory was captured by enemies, and this threatened the existence of the young state. Kolchak dominated in the east of the country, Denikin in the south, Miller in the north, and their armies tried to close a ring around the capital. The Bolsheviks, in turn, created the Red Army, which achieved its first military successes.

Third period: from November 1918 to spring 1919

In November 1918, the First World War ended. Soviet power was established in the Ukrainian, Belarusian and Baltic territories. But already at the end of autumn, Entente troops landed in Crimea, Odessa, Batumi and Baku. But this military operation was not successful, since revolutionary anti-war sentiment reigned among the interventionist troops. During this period of the struggle against Bolshevism, the leading role belonged to the armies of Kolchak, Yudenich and Denikin.

Fourth period: from spring 1919 to spring 1920

During this period, the main forces of the interventionists left Russia. In the spring and autumn of 1919, the Red Army won major victories in the East, South and North-West of the country, defeating the armies of Kolchak, Denikin and Yudenich.

Fifth period: spring-autumn 1920

The internal counter-revolution was completely destroyed. And in the spring the Soviet-Polish war began, which ended in complete failure for Russia. According to the Riga Peace Treaty, part of the Ukrainian and Belarusian lands went to Poland.

Sixth period:: 1921-1922

During these years, all remaining centers of the civil war were eliminated: the rebellion in Kronstadt was suppressed, the Makhnovist detachments were destroyed, the Far East was liberated, and the fight against the Basmachi in Central Asia was completed.

Results of the civil war

• As a result of hostilities and terror, more than 8 million people died from hunger and disease.
• Industry, transport and agriculture were on the brink of disaster.

• The main result of this terrible war was the final establishment of Soviet power.

The Russian Civil War is an armed confrontation in 1917-1922. organized military-political structures and state entities, conventionally defined as “white” and “red,” as well as national-state entities on the territory of the former Russian Empire (bourgeois republics, regional state entities). Spontaneously emerging military and socio-political groups, often referred to as “third force” (rebel groups, partisan republics, etc.), also took part in the armed confrontation. Also, foreign states (referred to as “interventionists”) participated in the civil confrontation in Russia.

Periodization of the Civil War

There are 4 stages in the history of the Civil War:

First stage: summer 1917 - November 1918 - formation of the main centers of the anti-Bolshevik movement

Second stage: November 1918 - April 1919 - the beginning of the Entente intervention.

Reasons for intervention:

Deal with Soviet power;

Protect your interests;

Fear of socialist influence.

Third stage: May 1919 - April 1920 - simultaneous struggle of Soviet Russia against the White armies and Entente troops

Fourth stage: May 1920 - November 1922 (summer 1923) - defeat of the white armies, end of the civil war

Background and reasons

The origin of the Civil War cannot be reduced to any one cause. It was the result of deep political, socio-economic, national and spiritual contradictions. The potential for public discontent during the First World War and the devaluation of the values ​​of human life played an important role. The agrarian-peasant policy of the Bolsheviks also played a negative role (the introduction of the Committee of Poor People's Commissars and the surplus appropriation system). The Bolshevik political doctrine, according to which civil war is a natural outcome of the socialist revolution, caused by the resistance of the overthrown ruling classes, also contributed to the civil war. On the initiative of the Bolsheviks, the All-Russian Constituent Assembly was dissolved, and the multi-party system was gradually eliminated.

The actual defeat in the war with Germany, the Brest-Litovsk Treaty led to the fact that the Bolsheviks began to be accused of “the destruction of Russia.”

The right of peoples to self-determination, proclaimed by the new government, and the emergence of many independent state entities in different parts of the country were perceived by supporters of “One, Indivisible” Russia as a betrayal of its interests.

Dissatisfaction with the Soviet regime was also expressed by those who opposed its demonstrative break with the historical past and with ancient traditions. The anti-church policy of the Bolsheviks was especially painful for millions of people.

The civil war took various forms, including uprisings, isolated armed clashes, large-scale operations involving regular armies, guerrilla warfare, and terror. The peculiarity of the Civil War in our country was that it turned out to be extremely long, bloody, and unfolded over a vast territory.

Chronological framework

Individual episodes of the Civil War took place already in 1917 (February events of 1917, the July “semi-uprising” in Petrograd, Kornilov’s speech, October battles in Moscow and other cities), and in the spring and summer of 1918 it acquired a large-scale, front-line character .

It is not easy to determine the final boundary of the Civil War. Front-line military operations on the territory of the European part of the country ended in 1920. But then there were also massive peasant uprisings against the Bolsheviks, and performances by Kronstadt sailors in the spring of 1921. Only in 1922-1923. The armed struggle in the Far East ended. This milestone can generally be considered the end of a large-scale Civil War.

Features of armed confrontation during the Civil War

Military operations during the Civil War differed significantly from previous periods. It was a time of unique military creativity that broke the stereotypes of troop command and control, the army recruitment system, and military discipline. The greatest successes were achieved by the military leader who commanded in a new way, using all means to achieve the task. The Civil War was a war of maneuver. Unlike the period of “positional war” of 1915-1917, there were no continuous front lines. Cities, villages, and villages could change hands several times. Therefore, active, offensive actions, caused by the desire to seize the initiative from the enemy, were of decisive importance.

The fighting during the Civil War was characterized by a variety of strategies and tactics. During the establishment of Soviet power in Petrograd and Moscow, street fighting tactics were used. In mid-October 1917, the Military Revolutionary Committee created in Petrograd under the leadership of V.I. Lenin and N.I. Podvoisky developed a plan to capture the main city facilities (telephone exchange, telegraph, stations, bridges). Fighting in Moscow (October 27 - November 3, 1917, old style), between the forces of the Moscow Military Revolutionary Committee (leaders - G.A. Usievich, N.I. Muralov) and the Public Security Committee (commander of the Moscow Military District, Colonel K.I. Ryabtsev and the head of the garrison, Colonel L.N. Treskin) were distinguished by the offensive of the Red Guard detachments and soldiers of the reserve regiments from the outskirts to the city center, occupied by the cadets and the White Guard. Artillery was used to suppress white strongholds. Similar tactics of street fighting were used during the establishment of Soviet power in Kyiv, Kaluga, Irkutsk, and Chita.

Formation of the main centers of the anti-Bolshevik movement

Since the beginning of the formation of units of the White and Red armies, the scale of military operations has expanded. In 1918, they were carried out mainly along railway lines and amounted to the capture of large junction stations and cities. This period was called “echelon war.”

In January-February 1918, Red Guard units under the command of V.A. advanced along the railways. Antonov-Ovseenko and R.F. Sivers to Rostov-on-Don and Novocherkassk, where the forces of the Volunteer Army were concentrated under the command of generals M.V. Alekseeva and L.G. Kornilov.

In the spring of 1918, units of the Czechoslovak Corps formed from prisoners of war of the Austro-Hungarian army took action. Located in echelons along the Trans-Siberian Railway from Penza to Vladivostok, the corps led by R. Gaida, Y. Syrov, S. Chechek was subordinate to the French military command and was sent to the Western Front. In response to demands for disarmament, the corps overthrew Soviet power in Omsk, Tomsk, Novonikolaevsk, Krasnoyarsk, Vladivostok and throughout the entire territory of Siberia adjacent to the Trans-Siberian Railway during May-June 1918.

In the summer-autumn of 1918, during the 2nd Kuban campaign, the Volunteer Army captured the junction stations of Tikhoretskaya, Torgovaya, and Armavir and Stavropol actually decided the outcome of the operation in the North Caucasus.

The initial period of the Civil War was associated with the activities of the underground centers of the White movement. In all major cities of Russia there were cells associated with the former structures of military districts and military units located in these cities, as well as with underground organizations of monarchists, cadets and Socialist Revolutionaries. In the spring of 1918, on the eve of the performance of the Czechoslovak Corps, an officer underground operated in Petropavlovsk and Omsk under the leadership of Colonel P.P. Ivanov-Rinova, in Tomsk - Lieutenant Colonel A.N. Pepelyaev, in Novonikolaevsk - Colonel A.N. Grishina-Almazova.

In the summer of 1918, General Alekseev approved a secret regulation on the recruitment centers of the Volunteer Army created in Kyiv, Kharkov, Odessa, and Taganrog. They transmitted intelligence information, sent officers across the front line, and were also supposed to oppose the Soviet government as White Army units approached the city.

A similar role was played by the Soviet underground, which was active in the White Crimea, the North Caucasus, Eastern Siberia and the Far East in 1919-1920, creating strong partisan detachments that later became part of the regular units of the Red Army.

The beginning of 1919 marks the end of the formation of the White and Red armies.

The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army included 15 armies, covering the entire front in the center of European Russia. The highest military leadership was concentrated under the Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic (RVSR) L.D. Trotsky and the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Republic, former Colonel S.S. Kameneva. All issues of logistical support for the front, issues of regulating the economy on the territory of Soviet Russia were coordinated by the Labor and Defense Council (SLO), the chairman of which was V.I. Lenin. He also headed the Soviet government - the Council of People's Commissars (Sovnarkom).

They were opposed by those united under the Supreme Command of Admiral A.V. Kolchak armies of the Eastern Front (Siberian (Lieutenant General R. Gaida), Western (artillery general M.V. Khanzhin), Southern (Major General P.A. Belov) and Orenburg (Lieutenant General A.I. Dutov) , as well as the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the South of Russia (AFSR), Lieutenant General A.I. Denikin, who recognized the power of Kolchak (Dobrovolskaya (Lieutenant General V.Z. May-Mayevsky), Donskaya (Lieutenant General V.I. Sidorin) were subordinate to him) and the Caucasian (Lieutenant General P. N. Wrangel) army.) In the general direction of Petrograd, the troops of the Commander-in-Chief of the North-Western Front, Infantry General N. N. Yudenich, and the Commander-in-Chief of the Northern Region, Lieutenant General E. K. Miller, acted.

The period of greatest development of the Civil War

In the spring of 1919, attempts at combined attacks by the white fronts began. From that time on, military operations took the form of full-scale operations on a wide front, using all types of troops (infantry, cavalry, artillery), with the active assistance of aviation, tanks and armored trains. In March-May 1919, the offensive of the Eastern Front of Admiral Kolchak began, striking in divergent directions - to Vyatka-Kotlas, to connect with the Northern Front and to the Volga - to connect with the armies of General Denikin.

The troops of the Soviet Eastern Front, under the leadership of S.S. Kamenev and, mainly, the 5th Soviet Army, under the command of M.N. Tukhachevsky by the beginning of June 1919 stopped the advance of the white armies by launching counterattacks in the Southern Urals (near Buguruslan and Belebey) and in the Kama region.

In the summer of 1919, the offensive of the Armed Forces of the South of Russia (AFSR) began on Kharkov, Yekaterinoslav and Tsaritsyn. After the latter was occupied by the army of General Wrangel, on July 3, Denikin signed a directive on the “march against Moscow.” During July-October, the AFSR troops occupied most of Ukraine and the provinces of the Black Earth Center of Russia, stopping on the line Kyiv - Bryansk - Orel - Voronezh - Tsaritsyn. Almost simultaneously with the offensive of the AFSR on Moscow, the attack of the North-Western Army of General Yudenich on Petrograd began.

For Soviet Russia, the time of autumn 1919 became the most critical. Total mobilizations of communists and Komsomol members were carried out, the slogans “Everything for the defense of Petrograd” and “Everything for the defense of Moscow” were put forward. Thanks to control over the main railway lines converging towards the center of Russia, the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic (RVSR) could transfer troops from one front to another. So, at the height of the fighting in the Moscow direction, several divisions were transferred from Siberia, as well as from the Western Front to the Southern Front and near Petrograd. At the same time, the white armies failed to establish a common anti-Bolshevik front (with the exception of contacts at the level of individual detachments between the Northern and Eastern Fronts in May 1919, as well as between the AFSR front and the Ural Cossack Army in August 1919). Thanks to the concentration of forces from different fronts by mid-October 1919 near Orel and Voronezh, the commander of the Southern Front, former Lieutenant General V.N. Egorov managed to create a strike group, the basis of which was parts of the Latvian and Estonian rifle divisions, as well as the 1st Cavalry Army under the command of S.M. Budyonny and K.E. Voroshilov. Counterattacks were launched on the flanks of the 1st Corps of the Volunteer Army, which was advancing on Moscow, under the command of Lieutenant General A.P. Kutepova. After stubborn fighting during October-November 1919, the front of the AFSR was broken, and a general retreat of the Whites from Moscow began. In mid-November, before reaching 25 km from Petrograd, units of the North-Western Army were stopped and defeated.

The military operations of 1919 were distinguished by the widespread use of maneuver. Large cavalry formations were used to break through the front and conduct raids behind enemy lines. In the white armies, Cossack cavalry was used in this capacity. The 4th Don Corps, specially formed for this purpose, under the command of Lieutenant General K.K. Mamantova in August-September made a deep raid from Tambov to the borders with the Ryazan province and Voronezh. Siberian Cossack Corps under the command of Major General P.P. Ivanova-Rinova broke through the Red Front near Petropavlovsk in early September. The “Chervonnaya Division” from the Southern Front of the Red Army raided the rear of the Volunteer Corps in October-November. By the end of 1919, the 1st Cavalry Army began its operations, advancing in the Rostov and Novocherkassk directions.

In January-March 1920, fierce battles unfolded in the Kuban. During operations on the river. Manych and under Art. Egorlykskaya took place the last major cavalry battles in world history. Up to 50 thousand horsemen from both sides took part in them. Their result was the defeat of the AFSR and evacuation to the Crimea on ships of the Black Sea Fleet. In Crimea, in April 1920, the white troops were renamed the “Russian Army”, the command of which was taken by Lieutenant General P.N. Wrangel.

The defeat of the white armies. End of the Civil War

At the turn of 1919-1920. was finally defeated by A.V. Kolchak. His army was scattering, and partisan detachments were operating in the rear. The Supreme Ruler was captured and in February 1920 in Irkutsk he was shot by the Bolsheviks.

In January 1920 N.N. Yudenich, who had undertaken two unsuccessful campaigns against Petrograd, announced the dissolution of his North-Western Army.

After the defeat of Poland, the army of P.N., locked in Crimea. Wrangel was doomed. Having carried out a short offensive north of Crimea, it went on the defensive. The forces of the Southern Front of the Red Army (commander M.V. Frunze) defeated the Whites in October - November 1920. The 1st and 2nd Cavalry armies made a significant contribution to the victory over them. Almost 150 thousand people, military and civilians, left Crimea.

Fighting in 1920-1922. were distinguished by small territories (Tavria, Transbaikalia, Primorye), smaller troops and already included elements of trench warfare. During the defense, fortifications were used (white lines on Perekop and Chongar in Crimea in 1920, Kakhovsky fortified area of ​​the 13th Soviet Army on the Dnieper in 1920, built by the Japanese and transferred to the white Volochaevsky and Spassky fortified areas in Primorye in 1921-1922. ). To break through, long-term artillery preparation was used, as well as flamethrowers and tanks.

Victory over P.N. Wrangel did not yet mean the end of the Civil War. Now the main opponents of the Reds were not the Whites, but the Greens, as the representatives of the peasant insurgent movement called themselves. The most powerful peasant movement developed in the Tambov and Voronezh provinces. It began in August 1920 after the peasants were given an impossible task of food appropriation. The rebel army, commanded by the Socialist Revolutionary A.S. Antonov, managed to overthrow the Bolshevik power in several counties. At the end of 1920, units of the regular Red Army led by M.N. were sent to fight the rebels. Tukhachevsky. However, fighting the partisan peasant army turned out to be even more difficult than fighting the White Guards in open battle. Only in June 1921 was the Tambov uprising suppressed, and A.S. Antonov was killed in a shootout. During the same period, the Reds managed to win a final victory over Makhno.

The high point of the Civil War in 1921 was the uprising of Kronstadt sailors, who joined the protests of St. Petersburg workers demanding political freedoms. The uprising was brutally suppressed in March 1921.

During 1920-1921 units of the Red Army made several campaigns in Transcaucasia. As a result, independent states were liquidated on the territory of Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia and Soviet power was established.

To fight the White Guards and interventionists in the Far East, the Bolsheviks created a new state in April 1920 - the Far Eastern Republic (FER). For two years, the army of the republic drove Japanese troops out of Primorye and defeated several White Guard chieftains. After this, at the end of 1922, the Far Eastern Republic became part of the RSFSR.

During the same period, overcoming the resistance of the Basmachi, who fought to preserve medieval traditions, the Bolsheviks won a victory in Central Asia. Although a few rebel groups were active until the 1930s.

Results of the Civil War

The main result of the Civil War in Russia was the establishment of Bolshevik power. Among the reasons for the Reds' victory are:

1. The Bolsheviks’ use of the political sentiments of the masses, powerful propaganda (clear goals, prompt resolution of issues in the world and on earth, exit from the world war, justification of terror by the fight against the country’s enemies);

2. Control by the Council of People's Commissars of the central provinces of Russia, where the main military enterprises were located;

3. Disunity of anti-Bolshevik forces (lack of common ideological positions; struggle “against something”, but not “for something”; territorial fragmentation).

The total population losses during the Civil War amounted to 12-13 million people. Almost half of them are victims of famine and mass epidemics. Emigration from Russia became widespread. About 2 million people left their homeland.

The country's economy was in a catastrophic state. The cities were depopulated. Industrial production fell by 5-7 times compared to 1913, agricultural production by one third.

The territory of the former Russian Empire disintegrated. The largest new state was the RSFSR.

Military equipment during the Civil War

New types of military equipment were successfully used on the battlefields of the Civil War, some of which appeared in Russia for the first time. For example, in units of the AFSR, as well as the Northern and Northwestern armies, English and French tanks were actively used. The Red Guards, who did not have the skills to fight them, often retreated from their positions. However, during the assault on the Kakhovsky fortified area in October 1920, most of the white tanks were hit by artillery, and after the necessary repairs they were included in the Red Army, where they were used until the early 1930s. The presence of armored vehicles was considered a prerequisite for infantry support, both in street battles and during front-line operations.

The need for strong fire support during horse attacks gave rise to the emergence of such an original means of combat as horse-drawn carts - light two-wheeled carts with a machine gun mounted on them. Carts were first used in the rebel army of N.I. Makhno, but later began to be used in all large cavalry formations of the White and Red armies.

Air squads interacted with the ground forces. An example of a joint operation is the defeat of the cavalry corps of D.P. Rednecks by aviation and infantry of the Russian Army in June 1920. Aviation was also used for bombing fortified positions and reconnaissance. During the period of “echelon warfare” and later, armored trains, the number of which reached several dozen per army, operated together with infantry and cavalry on both sides. Special detachments were created from them.

Recruiting armies during the Civil War

In the conditions of the Civil War and the destruction of the state mobilization apparatus, the principles of recruiting armies changed. Only the Siberian Army of the Eastern Front was recruited in 1918 upon mobilization. Most units of the AFSR, as well as the Northern and Northwestern armies, were replenished from volunteers and prisoners of war. Volunteers were the most reliable in combat.

The Red Army was also characterized by the predominance of volunteers (initially, only volunteers were accepted into the Red Army, and admission required “proletarian origin” and a “recommendation” from the local party cell). The predominance of mobilized and prisoners of war became widespread at the final stage of the Civil War (in the ranks of the Russian Army of General Wrangel, as part of the 1st Cavalry in the Red Army).

The White and Red armies were distinguished by their small numbers and, as a rule, the discrepancy between the actual composition of military units and their staff (for example, divisions of 1000-1500 bayonets, regiments of 300 bayonets, a shortage of up to 35-40% was even approved).

In the command of the White armies, the role of young officers increased, and in the Red Army - party nominees. The institution of political commissars, which was completely new for the armed forces (first appeared under the Provisional Government in 1917), was established. The average age of the command level in the positions of division chiefs and corps commanders was 25-35 years.

The absence of an order system in the AFSR and the awarding of successive ranks led to the fact that in 1.5-2 years officers progressed from lieutenants to generals.

In the Red Army, with a relatively young command staff, a significant role was played by former officers of the General Staff who planned strategic operations (former lieutenant generals M.D. Bonch-Bruevich, V.N. Egorov, former colonels I.I. Vatsetis, S.S. Kamenev, F.M. Afanasyev, A.N. Stankevich, etc.).

Military-political factor in the Civil War

The specificity of the civil war, as a military-political confrontation between whites and reds, was also that military operations were often planned under the influence of certain political factors. In particular, the offensive of the Eastern Front of Admiral Kolchak in the spring of 1919 was undertaken in anticipation of quick diplomatic recognition of him as the Supreme Ruler of Russia by the Entente countries. And the offensive of General Yudenich’s North-Western Army on Petrograd was caused not only by the hope of quickly occupying the “cradle of the revolution”, but also by fears of concluding a peace treaty between Soviet Russia and Estonia. In this case, Yudenich’s army lost its base. The offensive of the Russian army of General Wrangel in Tavria in the summer of 1920 was supposed to draw back part of the forces from the Soviet-Polish front.

Many operations of the Red Army, regardless of strategic reasons and military potential, were also of a purely political nature (for the sake of the so-called “triumph of the world revolution”). So, for example, in the summer of 1919, the 12th and 14th armies of the Southern Front were supposed to be sent to support the revolutionary uprising in Hungary, and the 7th and 15th armies were supposed to establish Soviet power in the Baltic republics. In 1920, during the war with Poland, troops of the Western Front, under the command of M.N. Tukhachevsky, after operations to defeat the Polish armies in Western Ukraine and Belarus, transferred their operations to the territory of Poland, counting on the creation of a pro-Soviet government here. The actions of the 11th and 12th Soviet armies in Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia in 1921 were of a similar nature. At the same time, under the pretext of the defeat of units of the Asian Cavalry Division of Lieutenant General R.F. Ungern-Sternberg, troops of the Far Eastern Republic and the 5th Soviet Army were introduced into the territory of Mongolia and a socialist regime was established (the first in the world after Soviet Russia).

During the Civil War, it became a practice to carry out operations dedicated to anniversaries (the beginning of the assault on Perekop by troops of the Southern Front under the command of M.V. Frunze on November 7, 1920, on the anniversary of the 1917 revolution).

The military art of the Civil War became a striking example of the combination of traditional and innovative forms of strategy and tactics in the difficult conditions of the Russian “Troubles” of 1917-1922. It determined the development of Soviet military art (in particular, the use of large cavalry formations) in the following decades, until the beginning of World War II.

Russian Civil War- an irreconcilable armed struggle for the possession of state power by large masses of people belonging to different classes and social groups, accompanied by military intervention of foreign states.

Chronological framework: 1917 – 1922 or 1918 – 1920, 1918 – 1922

Causes: political extremism of the Bolsheviks, dispersal of the Constituent Assembly, usurpation of power by the Bolsheviks (the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks aggravated social confrontation), the signing of the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty, humiliating for Russia, the introduction of a food dictatorship, the liquidation of landownership, the nationalization of banks and enterprises.

Reds- Red Army of the Bolsheviks.

White movement- a military-political movement of politically heterogeneous forces formed with the goal of overthrowing Soviet power. It included representatives of both moderate socialists and republicans, as well as monarchists, united against Bolshevik ideology and acting on the basis of the principle of “one and indivisible Russia.” The backbone of the White movement was the officers of the old Russian army. The initial goal of the White movement: to prevent the establishment of Bolshevik power. The political program of the white movement was extremely controversial, but at the first stage of the Civil War it included the elimination of Bolshevik power, the restoration of a united Russia, and the convening of a national people's assembly on the basis of universal suffrage.

"Green" were called peasant rebels who fought against surplus appropriation in territories controlled by the Soviet regime, and against the return of landownership and requisitions in the territories of the white governments. After the division of the landowners' lands, the peasants wanted class peace, looked for an opportunity to do without a struggle, but were drawn into it by the active actions of the Whites and Reds.

Anarchists: The most significant were the actions of anarchists in Ukraine, led by the anarcho-communist Nestor Makhno. The Makhnovists acted against whites, reds, nationalists and interventionists. During the fighting, the Makhnovists entered into an alliance with the Bolsheviks three times, but all three times the Bolsheviks violated the alliance, so that in the end the Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine (RPAU) was defeated by the many times superior forces of the Red Army, and Makhno and several comrades fled abroad.

National separatist armed forces: Simon Petlyura fought for the independence of Ukraine. On February 10, 1919, after the resignation of Vinnychenko, Petliura effectively became the sole dictator of Ukraine. In the spring of the same year, trying to stop the Red Army's seizure of the entire territory of Ukraine, he reorganized the UPR army. He tried to negotiate with the White Guard command of the VSYUR (Armed Forces of the South of Russia) on joint actions against the Bolsheviks, but was not successful.

Intervention (14 states):

December 1917 Romania in Bessarabia

March 1918 Austria-Hungary and Germany in Ukraine

April 1918 Türkiye in Georgia

May 1918 Germany in Georgia

April 1918 France, USA, England, Japan in the Far East

March 1918 England, USA, France in Murmansk and Arkhangelsk

January 1919 left Odessa, Crimea, Vladivostok, northern ports

Spring 1919 left the Baltic and Black Sea

	Territory of the former Russian Empire, Iran, Mongolia, China.
	Victory of Soviet Russia, formation of the USSR.
Territorial changes:	Independence of Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland; Romania's annexation of Bessarabia; cession of parts of the Batumi and Kars regions to Turkey.
Opponents
Soviet Russia	Makhnovists (since 1919)	White movement
Soviet Ukraine	Green rebels	All-Great Don Army
Soviet Belarus		Kuban People's Republic
Far Eastern Republic	Ukrainian People's Republic	Outer Mongolia
Latvian SSR	Belarusian People's Republic	Bukhara Emirate
Donetsk-Krivoy Rog Soviet Republic		Khanate of Khiva
Turkestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic	Finland
Bukhara People's Soviet Republic	Azerbaijan
Khorezm People's Soviet Republic
Persian Soviet Socialist Republic
Makhnovists (until 1919)
	Kokand autonomy
	North Caucasus Emirate
	Austria-Hungary
	Germany
	Ottoman Empire
	Great Britain

(1917-1922/1923) - a chain of armed conflicts between various political, ethnic and social groups on the territory of the former Russian Empire.

Preamble

The main armed struggle for power during the Civil War was waged between the Bolshevik Red Army and the armed forces of the White movement, which was reflected in the stable naming of the main parties to the conflict “Red” and “White”. Both sides, for the period until their complete victory and pacification of the country, intended to exercise political power through dictatorship. Further goals were proclaimed as follows: on the part of the Reds - the construction of a classless communist society, both in Russia and in Europe, through active support of the “world revolution”; on the part of the Whites - the convening of a new Constituent Assembly, with the transfer to its discretion of deciding the issue of the political structure of Russia.

A characteristic feature of the Civil War was the willingness of all its participants to widely use violence to achieve their political goals (see “Red Terror” and “White Terror”).

An integral part of the civil war was the armed struggle of the national “outskirts” of the former Russian Empire for their independence and the insurrectionary movement of broad sections of the population against the troops of the main warring parties - the “Reds” and the “Whites”. Attempts to declare independence by the “outskirts” provoked resistance both from the “whites,” who fought for a “united and indivisible Russia,” and from the “reds,” who saw the growth of nationalism as a threat to the gains of the revolution.

The civil war unfolded under conditions of foreign military intervention and was accompanied by combat operations on Russian territory by both troops of the Quadruple Alliance countries and troops of the Entente countries.

The civil war was fought not only on the territory of the former Russian Empire, but also on the territory of neighboring states - Iran (Anzel operation), Mongolia and China.

The result of the Civil War was the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks in the main part of the territory of the former Russian Empire, recognition of the independence of Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Finland, as well as the creation of the Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian and Transcaucasian Soviet republics on the territory controlled by the Bolsheviks, which signed the agreement on December 30, 1922 about the formation of the USSR. About 2 million people who did not share the views of the new government chose to leave the country (see White emigration).

Despite the retreat and evacuation of the White armies from Russia as a direct result of the fighting of the Civil War, in the historical perspective the White movement was not defeated: once in exile, it continued to fight against Bolshevism both in Soviet Russia and beyond its borders. Wrangel's army retreated in battle from the Perekop positions to Sevastopol, from where it was evacuated in order. In exile, an army of about 50 thousand soldiers was retained as a combat unit based on new Kuban campaign until September 1, 1924, when the Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Army, General Baron P. N. Wrangel, transformed it into the Russian All-Military Union (ROVS) and the ongoing struggle of the “whites” and “reds” took on other forms (the struggle of the special services: the EMRO against the OGPU, NTS against the KGB in Europe and the USSR).

Reasons and time frame

In modern historical science, many questions related to the history of the Civil War in Russia, including the most important questions about its causes and its chronological framework, still remain controversial.

Causes

Among the most important causes of the Civil War in modern historiography, it is customary to highlight the social, political and national-ethnic contradictions that persisted in Russia even after the February Revolution. First of all, by October 1917, such pressing issues as ending the war and the agrarian question remained unresolved.

The proletarian revolution was considered by the Bolshevik leaders as a “rupture of civil peace” and in this sense was equated to a civil war. The readiness of the Bolshevik leaders to initiate a civil war is confirmed by Lenin’s thesis of 1914, later formalized in an article for the Social Democratic press: “Let’s turn the imperialist war into a civil war!” In 1917, this thesis underwent dramatic changes and, as Doctor of Historical Sciences B.I. Kolonitsky notes, Lenin removed the slogan about civil war, however, as the historian writes, culturally and psychologically the Bolsheviks, even after removing this thesis, were ready to start a civil war for the sake of transforming world war into world revolution. The desire of the Bolsheviks to retain power by any means, primarily violent, to establish the dictatorship of the party and build a new society based on their theoretical principles made a civil war inevitable.

Modern Russian historian and specialist on the Civil War V.D. Zimina writes about the presence of integrative unity between October 1917 and the Civil War in Russia.

In the period after the October Revolution until the beginning of the period of active hostilities in the Civil War (May 1918), the leadership of the Soviet state took a number of political steps, which some researchers attribute to the causes of the Civil War:

• resistance of the previously dominant classes, which lost power and property (nationalization of industry and banks and the solution of the agrarian question in accordance with the program of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, contrary to the interests of the landowners);
• dispersal of the Constituent Assembly;
• exit from the war by signing the ruinous Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany;
• the activities of Bolshevik food detachments and committees of the poor in the countryside, which led to a sharp aggravation of relations between the Soviet government and the peasantry;

The civil war was accompanied by widespread interference of foreign states in the internal affairs of Russia. Foreign states supported separatist movements in order to spread their influence to the national outskirts of the former Russian Empire. The intervention of the Entente states in the internal political situation in Russia through foreign intervention against the Bolsheviks was due to the desire to return Russia to the war (Russia was an ally of the Entente countries in the First World War). At the same time, foreign states sought to gain opportunities to exploit the resources of Russia, struck by civil conflict, under the guise of preventing the spread of the world revolution, which was one of the goals of the Bolsheviks.

Chronological framework

Most modern Russian researchers consider the first act of the Civil War to be the fighting in Petrograd during the October Revolution of 1917 carried out by the Bolsheviks, and the time of its end to be the defeat of the last large anti-Bolshevik armed formations by the “Reds” during the capture of Vladivostok in October 1922. Some authors consider the fighting to be the first act of the Civil War in Petrograd during the February Revolution of 1917. From the title of the Great Encyclopedia “Revolution and Civil War in Russia: 1917-1923” follows the date of the end of the Civil War in 1923.

Some researchers, using a narrower definition of the Civil War, attribute to it only the time of the most active military operations, which took place from May 1918 to November 1920.

The course of the Civil War can be divided into three stages, which differ significantly in the intensity of hostilities, the composition of participants and foreign policy conditions.

• First stage- from October 1917 to November 1918, when the formation and formation of the armed forces of the warring parties took place, as well as the formation of the main fronts of struggle between them. This period is characterized by the fact that the Civil War unfolded simultaneously with the ongoing 1st World War, which entailed the active participation of the troops of the Quadruple Alliance and the Entente in the internal political and armed struggle in Russia. The fighting was characterized by a gradual transition from local skirmishes, as a result of which none of the warring parties acquired a decisive advantage, to large-scale actions.

• Second phase- from November 1918 to March 1920, when the main battles took place between the Red Army and the White armies, and a radical turning point in the Civil War occurred. During this period, there was a sharp reduction in military operations by foreign interventionists due to the end of World War I and the withdrawal of the main contingent of foreign troops from Russian territory. Large-scale hostilities unfolded throughout Russia, first bringing success to the “Whites” and then to the “Reds,” who defeated the enemy troops and took control of the main territory of the country.

• Third stage- from March 1920 to October 1922, when the main struggle took place on the outskirts of the country and no longer posed an immediate threat to the power of the Bolsheviks.

After the evacuation of the Zemskaya Rati of General Diterichs, only the Siberian Volunteer Squad of Lieutenant General A. N. Pepelyaev, who fought in the Yakut Territory until June 1923 ((see Yakut campaign)), and the Cossack detachment of military foreman Bologov, who remained near Nikolsk, continued to fight in Russia -Ussuriysk. In Kamchatka and Chukotka, Soviet power was finally established in 1923.

In Central Asia, the Basmachi operated until 1932, although isolated battles and operations continued until 1938.

Background to the war

On February 27, 1917, the Provisional Committee of the State Duma and the Petrograd Council of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies were simultaneously formed. On March 1, the Petrograd Soviet issued Order No. 1, which abolished unity of command in the army and transferred the right to dispose of weapons to elected soldier committees.

On March 2, Emperor Nicholas II abdicated the throne in favor of his son, then in favor of his brother Michael. Mikhail Alexandrovich refused to take the throne, giving the right to decide the future fate of Russia to the Constituent Assembly. On March 2, the executive committee of the Petrograd Soviet concluded an agreement with the Provisional Committee of the State Duma on the formation of the Provisional Government, one of the tasks of which was to govern the country until the convening of the Constituent Assembly.

To replace the Police Department dissolved on March 10, the formation of a workers' militia (Red Guard) began on April 17 under local councils. Since May 1917, on the Southwestern Front, the commander of the 8th Shock Army, General L. G. Kornilov, began the formation of volunteer units ( "Kornilovites", "drummers").

In the period until August 1917, the composition of the Provisional Government increasingly changed towards an increase in the number of socialists: in April, after the Provisional Government sent a note to the Entente governments about Russia's loyalty to its allied obligations and its intention to continue the war to a victorious end, and in June after an unsuccessful offensive in the southwestern front. After the Provisional Government recognized the autonomy of Ukraine, the cadets resigned from the government in protest. After the suppression of the armed uprising in Petrograd on July 4, 1917, the composition of the government was changed again; for the first time, the representative of the left, Kerensky A.F., became minister-chairman, who banned the Bolshevik Party and made concessions to the right, restoring the death penalty at the front. The new commander-in-chief, infantry general L.G. Kornilov, also demanded the restoration of the death penalty in the rear.

On August 27, Kerensky dissolved the cabinet and arbitrarily assumed “dictatorial powers”, single-handedly removed General Kornilov from office, demanded the cancellation of the movement to Petrograd of General Krymov’s cavalry corps, which he had previously sent, and appointed himself Supreme Commander-in-Chief. Kerensky stopped persecuting the Bolsheviks and turned to the Soviets for help. The Cadets resigned from the government in protest.

Over the course of two months from the suppression of the Kornilov uprising and the imprisonment of its main participants in the Bykhov prison, the number and influence of the Bolsheviks grew steadily. The councils of the country's major industrial centers, the councils of the Baltic Fleet, as well as the Northern and Western fronts came under the control of the Bolsheviks.

First period of the war (November 1917 - November 1918)

The Bolsheviks' rise to power and domestic politics

October Revolution

Assessing the situation in Petrograd on October 24 (November 6) as a “state of uprising,” the head of government, Kerensky, left Petrograd for Pskov (where the headquarters of the Northern Front was located) to meet the troops called from the front to support his government. On October 25, the Supreme Commander-in-Chief Kerensky and the Chief of Staff of the Russian Army, General Dukhonin, gave the order to the commanders of the fronts and internal military districts and the atamans of the Cossack troops to allocate reliable units for the campaign against Petrograd and Moscow and suppress the Bolshevik uprising by military force.

On the evening of October 25, the Second Congress of Soviets opened in Petrograd, which was subsequently proclaimed the highest legislative body. At the same time, members of the Menshevik and Socialist Revolutionary factions, who refused to accept the Bolshevik coup, left the congress and formed the “Committee for the Salvation of the Motherland and the Revolution.” The Bolsheviks were supported by the Left Social Revolutionaries, who received a number of posts in the Soviet government. The first resolutions adopted by the congress were the Decree on Peace, the Decree on Land and the abolition of the death penalty at the front. On November 2, the congress adopted the Declaration of the Rights of the Peoples of Russia, which proclaimed the right of the peoples of Russia to free self-determination, up to and including secession and the formation of an independent state.

On October 25 at 21:45, a blank shot from the Aurora's bow gun gave the signal for the assault on the Winter Palace. The Red Guards, parts of the Petrograd garrison and sailors of the Baltic Fleet, led by Vladimir Antonov-Ovseyenko, occupied the Winter Palace and arrested the Provisional Government. There was no resistance to the attackers. Subsequently, this event was considered as the central episode of the revolution.

Having failed to find tangible support in Pskov from GlavKomSev Verkhovsky, Kerensky was forced to seek help from General Krasnov, who at that time was quartered in the city of Ostrov. After some hesitation, help was received. Units of Krasnov's 3rd Cavalry Corps, numbering 700 people, moved from Ostrov to Petrograd. On October 27, these units occupied Gatchina, and on October 28, Tsarskoe Selo, reaching the closest approaches to the capital. On October 29, a cadet uprising broke out in Petrograd under the leadership of the Committee for the Salvation of the Motherland and the Revolution, but it was soon suppressed by the superior forces of the Bolsheviks. Due to the extreme small number of his units and the defeat of the cadets, Krasnov began negotiations with the “Reds” on a cessation of hostilities. Meanwhile, Kerensky, fearing that he would be handed over to the Bolsheviks by the Cossacks, fled. Krasnov agreed with the commander of the red detachments, Dybenko, about the unhindered withdrawal of the Cossacks from Petrograd.

The Cadet Party was outlawed; on November 28, a number of their leaders were arrested, and several cadet publications were closed.

constituent Assembly

Elections to the All-Russian Constituent Assembly, scheduled by the Provisional Government for November 12, 1917, showed that the Bolsheviks were supported by less than a quarter of those who voted. The meeting opened on January 5, 1918 at the Tauride Palace in Petrograd. After the Socialist Revolutionaries refused to discuss the “Declaration of the Rights of the Working and Exploited People,” which declared Russia a “Republic of Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Deputies,” the Bolsheviks, Left Socialist Revolutionaries and some delegates of national parties left the meeting. This deprived the meeting of quorum and its resolutions of legitimacy. However, the remaining deputies, chaired by the leader of the Socialist Revolutionaries Viktor Chernov, continued their work and adopted resolutions on the abolition of the decrees of the Second Congress of Soviets and the formation of the RDFR.

On January 5 in Petrograd and January 6 in Moscow, rallies in support of the Constituent Assembly were shot. On January 18, the III All-Russian Congress of Soviets approved the decree on the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly and decided to remove from the legislation instructions on the temporary nature of the government (“until the convening of the Constituent Assembly”). Defense of the Constituent Assembly became one of the slogans of the White movement.

On January 19, the Message of Patriarch Tikhon was issued, anathematizing the “madmen” who commit “bloody massacres” and condemning the unleashed persecution of the Orthodox Church

Left Socialist Revolutionary uprisings (1918)

In the first time after the October revolution, the Left Socialist Revolutionaries, together with the Bolsheviks, participated in the creation of the Red Army and in the work of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission (VChK).

The break occurred in February 1918, when at a meeting of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee the Left Socialist Revolutionaries voted against signing the Brest Peace Treaty, and then, at the IV Extraordinary Congress of Soviets, against its ratification. Unable to insist on their own, the Left Socialist Revolutionaries resigned from the Council of People's Commissars and announced the termination of the agreement with the Bolsheviks.

In connection with the adoption by the Soviet government of decrees on committees of the poor, already in June 1918 the Central Committee of the Left Socialist Revolutionary Party and the Third Party Congress decided to use all available means in order to “straighten the line of Soviet policy.” At the V All-Russian Congress of Soviets in early July 1918, the Bolsheviks, despite the opposition of the left Socialist Revolutionaries, who were in the minority, adopted the first Soviet Constitution (July 10), enshrining in it the ideological principles of the new regime. Its main task was “the establishment of the dictatorship of the urban and rural proletariat and the poor peasantry in the form of a powerful All-Russian Soviet state power with the goal of completely crushing the bourgeoisie.” Workers could send 5 times more delegates from an equal number of voters than peasants (the urban and rural bourgeoisie, landowners, officials and clergy still did not have voting rights in elections to the councils). Being representatives of the interests primarily of the peasantry and being principled opponents of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the Left Social Revolutionaries moved to active action.

On July 6, 1918, the left Socialist Revolutionary Yakov Blumkin killed the German ambassador Mirbach in Moscow, which served as a signal for the start of uprisings in Moscow, Yaroslavl, Rybinsk, Kovrov and other cities. On July 10, in support of his comrades, the commander of the Eastern Front, the left Socialist Revolutionary Muravyov, tried to raise an uprising against the Bolsheviks. But he and his entire headquarters, under the pretext of negotiations, were lured into a trap and killed. By July 21, the uprisings were suppressed, but the situation remained difficult.

On August 30, the Socialist Revolutionaries made an attempt on Lenin’s life, killing the chairman of the Petrograd Cheka, M. S. Uritsky. On September 5, the Bolsheviks declared red terror - mass repressions against political opponents. In one night alone, 2,200 people were killed in Moscow and Petrograd.

After the radicalization of the anti-Bolshevik movement (in particular, after the overthrow of the Ufa Directory in Siberia by Admiral A. Kolchak), at the February 1919 Socialist Revolutionary Party Conference in Petrograd, it was decided to abandon attempts to overthrow Soviet power.

Bolsheviks and the active army

Lieutenant General Dukhonin, who served as the acting supreme commander after Kerensky's escape, refused to carry out the orders of the self-proclaimed “government.” On November 19, he released generals Kornilov and Denikin from prison.

In the Baltic Fleet, the power of the Bolsheviks was established by the Tsentrobalt controlled by them, placing the entire power of the fleet at the disposal of the Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee (MRC). At the end of October - beginning of November 1917, in all the armies of the Northern Front, the Bolsheviks created army military military forces subordinate to them, which began to seize command of military units into their own hands. The Bolshevik Military Revolutionary Committee of the 5th Army took control of the army headquarters in Dvinsk and blocked the path for units trying to break through to support the Kerensky-Krasnov offensive. 40 thousand Latvian riflemen took Lenin’s side, playing an important role in establishing Bolshevik power throughout Russia. On November 7, 1917, the Military Revolutionary Committee of the North-Western Region and the Front was created, which removed the front commander, and on December 3, a congress of representatives of the Western Front opened, which elected A.F. Myasnikov as front commander.

The victory of the Bolsheviks in the troops of the Northern and Western Fronts created the conditions for the liquidation of the Headquarters of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief. The Council of People's Commissars (SNK) appointed the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Bolshevik warrant officer N.V. Krylenko, who on November 20 arrived with a detachment of Red Guards and sailors at Headquarters in the city of Mogilev, where he killed General Dukhonin, who refused to begin negotiations with the Germans, and, having headed the central apparatus of command and control, announced the cessation of hostilities at the front.

On the Southwestern, Romanian and Caucasian fronts, things were different. The Military Revolutionary Committee of the Southwestern Front was created (chaired by the Bolshevik G.V. Razzhivin), which took command into its own hands. On the Romanian front in November, the Council of People's Commissars appointed S. G. Roshal as front commissar, but the Whites, led by the commander of the Russian armies of the front, General D. G. Shcherbachev, took active action, members of the Military Revolutionary Committee of the front and a number of armies were arrested, and Roshal was killed. The armed struggle for power among the troops lasted two months, but the German occupation stopped the actions of the Bolsheviks on the Romanian front.

On December 23, a congress of the Caucasian Army opened in Tbilisi, which adopted a resolution on recognition and support of the Council of People's Commissars and condemned the actions of the Transcaucasian Commissariat. The congress elected the Regional Council of the Caucasian Army (chaired by the Bolshevik G. N. Korganov).

On January 15, 1918, the Soviet government issued a decree on the creation of the Red Army, and on January 29, the Red Fleet on volunteer (mercenary) principles. Detachments of Red Guards were sent to places not under the control of the Soviet government. In Southern Russia and Ukraine they were led by Antonov-Ovseenko, in the Southern Urals by Kobozev, in Belarus by Berzin.

On March 21, 1918, the election of commanders in the Red Army was abolished. On May 29, 1918, on the basis of universal conscription (mobilization), the creation of a regular Red Army began. The number of which in the fall of 1918 amounted to 800 thousand people, by the beginning of 1919 - 1.7 million, by December 1919 - 3 million, and by November 1, 1920 - 5.5 million.

Establishment of Soviet power. Beginning of the organization of anti-Bolshevik forces

One of the main reasons that allowed the Bolsheviks to carry out a coup d'etat and then quite quickly seize power in many regions and cities of the Russian Empire was the numerous reserve battalions stationed throughout Russia that did not want to go to the front. It was Lenin’s promise of an immediate end to the war with Germany that predetermined the transition of the Russian army, which had decayed during the “Kerenschina,” to the side of the Bolsheviks, which ensured their subsequent victory. At first, in most regions of the country, the establishment of Bolshevik power proceeded quickly and peacefully: out of 84 provincial and other large cities, only fifteen saw Soviet power established as a result of armed struggle. This gave the Bolsheviks a reason to talk about the “triumphant march of Soviet power” in the period from October 1917 to February 1918.

The victory of the uprising in Petrograd marked the beginning of the transfer of power into the hands of the Soviets in all major cities of Russia. In particular, the establishment of Soviet power in Moscow occurred only after the arrival of Red Guard detachments from Petrograd. In the central regions of Russia (Ivanovo-Voznesensk, Orekhovo-Zuevo, Shuya, Kineshma, Kostroma, Tver, Bryansk, Yaroslavl, Ryazan, Vladimir, Kovrov, Kolomna, Serpukhov, Podolsk, etc.) even before the October Revolution, many local Soviets were actually already located in the power of the Bolsheviks, and therefore they took power there quite easily. This process was more difficult in Tula, Kaluga, and Nizhny Novgorod, where the influence of the Bolsheviks in the Soviets was insignificant. However, having occupied key positions with armed detachments, the Bolsheviks achieved the “re-election” of the Soviets and took power into their own hands.

In the industrial cities of the Volga region, the Bolsheviks seized power immediately after Petrograd and Moscow. In Kazan, the command of the military district, in a bloc with socialist parties and Tatar nationalists, tried to disarm the pro-Bolshevik artillery reserve brigade, but Red Guard detachments occupied the station, post office, telephone, telegraph, bank, surrounded the Kremlin, arrested the commander of the district troops and the commissar of the Provisional Government, and on November 8 1917 the city was captured by the Bolsheviks. From November 1917 to January 1918, the Bolsheviks established their power in the district cities of the Kazan province. In Samara, the Bolsheviks under the leadership of V.V. Kuibyshev took power on November 8th. On November 9-11, overcoming the resistance of the Socialist-Revolutionary-Menshevik “Salvation Committee” and the Cadet Duma, the Bolsheviks won in Saratov. In Tsaritsyn they fought for power from November 10-11 to November 17. In Astrakhan, fighting continued until February 7, 1918. By February 1918, Bolshevik power was established throughout the Volga region.

On December 18, 1917, the Soviet government recognized the independence of Finland, but a month later Soviet power was established in southern Finland.

On November 7-8, 1917, the Bolsheviks seized power in Narva, Revel, Yuryev, Pärnu, and at the end of October - beginning of November - throughout the entire Baltic territory not occupied by the Germans. Attempts at resistance were suppressed. The plenum of Iskolat (Latvian Riflemen) on November 21-22 recognized Lenin's power. The congress of workers, riflemen and landless deputies (composed of Bolsheviks and left Socialist Revolutionaries) in Valmiera on December 29-31 formed the pro-Bolshevik government of Latvia, headed by F. A. Rozin (Republic of Iskolata).

On November 22, the Belarusian Rada did not recognize Soviet power. On December 15, she convened the All-Belarusian Congress in Minsk, which adopted a resolution on the non-recognition of local bodies of Soviet power. In January-February 1918, the anti-Bolshevik uprising of the Polish corps of General I.R. Dovbor-Musnitsky was suppressed, and power in the major cities of Belarus passed to the Bolsheviks.

At the end of October - beginning of November 1917, the Bolsheviks of Donbass took power in Lugansk, Makeevka, Gorlovka, Kramatorsk and other cities. On November 7, the Central Rada in Kyiv declared the independence of Ukraine and began the formation of the Ukrainian army to fight the Bolsheviks. In the first half of December 1917, Antonov-Ovseenko’s detachments occupied the Kharkov area. On December 14, 1917, the All-Ukrainian Congress of Soviets in Kharkov proclaimed Ukraine a Republic of Soviets and elected the Soviet Government of Ukraine. In December 1917 - January 1918, an armed struggle for the establishment of Soviet power unfolded in Ukraine. As a result of the fighting, the troops of the Central Rada were defeated and the Bolsheviks took power in Yekaterinoslav, Poltava, Kremenchug, Elizavetgrad, Nikolaev, Kherson and other cities. The Bolshevik government of Russia announced an ultimatum to the Central Rada demanding that the Russian Cossacks and officers traveling through Ukraine to the Don be stopped by force. In response to the ultimatum, the Central Rada on January 25, 1918, with its IV Universal, announced secession from Russia and the state independence of Ukraine. On January 26, 1918, Kyiv was captured by Red troops under the command of the left Socialist Revolutionary Muravyov. During the few days that Muravyov’s army stayed in the city, at least 2 thousand people, mostly Russian officers, were shot. Then Muravyov took a large indemnity from the city and moved on to Odessa.

In Sevastopol, the Bolsheviks took power on December 29, 1917, January 25-26, 1918, after a series of battles with Tatar nationalist units. Soviet power was established in Simferopol, and in January 1918 throughout the Crimea. Massacres and looting began. In just a month and a half, before the arrival of the Germans, the Bolsheviks killed more than 1 thousand people in Crimea.

In Rostov-on-Don, Soviet power was proclaimed on November 8, 1917. On November 2, 1917, General Alekseev began the formation of the Volunteer Army in the south of Russia. On the Don, Ataman Kaledin declared non-recognition of the Bolshevik coup. On December 15, after fierce battles, the troops of General Kornilov and Kaledin drove the Bolsheviks out of Rostov, and then from Taganrog, and launched an attack on the Donbass. On January 23, 1918, a self-proclaimed “congress” of front-line Cossack units in the village of Kamenskaya proclaimed Soviet power in the Don region and formed the Don Military Revolutionary Committee led by F. G. Podtyolkov (later caught by the Cossacks and hanged as a traitor). Detachments of the “Red Guard” of Sivers and Sablin in January 1918 pushed back units of Kaledin and the Volunteer Army from Donbass to the northern parts of the Don region. A significant part of the Cossacks did not support Kaledin and took neutrality.

On February 24, the red troops occupied Rostov, and on February 25, Novocherkassk. Unable to prevent the disaster, Kaledin himself shot himself, and the remnants of his troops retreated to the Salsky steppes. The volunteer army (4 thousand people) began a fighting retreat to Kuban (First Kuban Campaign). After the capture of Novocherkassk, the Reds killed Ataman Nazarov, who replaced Kaledin, and his entire headquarters. And in the Don cities, villages and villages there are another two thousand people.

The Cossack government of Kuban under the leadership of Ataman A.P. Filimonov also announced non-recognition of the new government. On March 14, Sorokin’s red troops occupied Yekaterinodar. The troops of the Kuban Rada under the command of General Pokrovsky retreated to the north, where they united with the troops of the approaching Volunteer Army. From April 9 to April 13, their combined forces under the command of General Kornilov unsuccessfully stormed Yekaterinodar. Kornilov was killed, and General Denikin, who replaced him, was forced to withdraw the remnants of the White Guard troops to the southern regions of the Don region, where at that time the Cossack uprising against Soviet power began.

Two-thirds of the Soviets of the Urals were Bolshevik, so in most cities and factory villages of the Urals (Ekaterinburg, Ufa, Chelyabinsk, Izhevsk, etc.) power passed to the Bolsheviks without difficulty. It was more difficult, but peacefully, to take power in Perm. A persistent armed struggle for power unfolded in the Orenburg province, where on November 8, the ataman of the Orenburg Cossacks, Dutov, announced non-recognition of the Bolshevik power on the territory of the Orenburg Cossack army and took control of Orenburg, Chelyabinsk, and Verkhneuralsk. Only on January 18, 1918, as a result of the joint actions of the Bolsheviks of Orenburg and the red detachments of Blucher who approached the city, Orenburg was captured. The remnants of Dutov's troops retreated to the Turgai steppes.

In Siberia, in December 1917 - January 1918, red troops suppressed the performance of cadets in Irkutsk. In Transbaikalia, Ataman Semyonov raised an anti-Bolshevik uprising on December 1, but it was suppressed almost immediately. The remnants of the ataman's Cossack detachments retreated to Manchuria.

On November 28, the Transcaucasian Commissariat was created in Tbilisi, declaring the independence of Transcaucasia and uniting Georgian Social Democrats (Mensheviks), Armenian (Dashnaks) and Azerbaijani (Musavatists) nationalists. Relying on national formations and White Guards, the commissariat extended its power to the entire Transcaucasus, except for the Baku region, where Soviet power was established. In relation to Soviet Russia and the Bolshevik Party, the Transcaucasian Commissariat took an openly hostile position, supporting all anti-Bolshevik forces in the North Caucasus - in the Kuban, Don, Terek and Dagestan in a joint struggle against Soviet power and its supporters in Transcaucasia. On February 23, 1918, the Transcaucasian Seym was convened in Tiflis. This legislative body included deputies elected from Transcaucasia to the Constituent Assembly, and representatives of local political parties. On April 22, 1918, the Seimas adopted a resolution declaring Transcaucasia an independent Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic (ZDFR).

In Turkestan, in the central city of the region - Tashkent, the Bolsheviks seized power as a result of fierce battles in the city (in its European part, the so-called “new” city), which lasted several days. On the side of the Bolsheviks were armed formations of railway workshop workers, and on the side of the anti-Bolshevik forces were officers of the Russian army and students of the cadet corps and the school of warrant officers located in Tashkent. In January 1918, the Bolsheviks suppressed anti-Bolshevik protests of Cossack formations under the command of Colonel Zaitsev in Samarkand and Chardzhou, in February they liquidated the Kokand autonomy, and in early March - the Semirechensk Cossack government in the city of Verny. All of Central Asia and Kazakhstan, except for the Khanate of Khiva and the Emirate of Bukhara, came under the control of the Bolsheviks. In April 1918, the Turkestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was proclaimed.

Peace of Brest-Litovsk. Intervention of the Central Powers

On November 20 (December 3), 1917 in Brest-Litovsk, the Soviet government concluded a separate armistice agreement with Germany and its allies. On December 9 (22), peace negotiations began. On December 27, 1917 (January 9, 1918), proposals were submitted to the Soviet delegation that provided for significant territorial concessions. Germany, thereby, laid claim to vast territories of Russia, which had large reserves of food and material resources. There was a split in the Bolshevik leadership. Lenin categorically advocated the satisfaction of all German demands. Trotsky suggested delaying the negotiations. The Left Social Revolutionaries and some Bolsheviks proposed not to make peace and continue the war with the Germans, which not only led to confrontation with Germany, but also undermined the position of the Bolsheviks inside Russia, since their popularity among the masses of soldiers was based on the promise of a way out of the war. On January 28 (February 10), 1918, the Soviet delegation interrupted the negotiations with the slogan “we will stop the war, but we will not sign peace.” In response, on February 18, German troops launched an offensive along the entire front line. At the same time, the German-Austrian side tightened the peace terms. On March 3, the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty was signed, according to which Russia lost about 1 million square meters. km (including Ukraine) and pledged to demobilize the army and navy, transfer ships and infrastructure of the Black Sea Fleet to Germany, pay an indemnity of 6 billion marks, recognize the independence of Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Finland. The Fourth Extraordinary Congress of Soviets, controlled by the Bolsheviks, despite the resistance of the “left communists” and left Socialist Revolutionaries, who regarded the conclusion of peace as a betrayal of the interests of the “world revolution” and national interests, due to the complete inability of the Sovietized old army and the Red Army to resist even the limited offensive of German troops and the need In a respite to strengthen the Bolshevik regime, on March 15, 1918, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was ratified.

By April 1918, with the help of German troops, the local government had regained control over the entire territory of Finland. The German army freely occupied the Baltic states and eliminated Soviet power there.

The Belarusian Rada, together with the corps of Polish legionnaires Dovbor-Musnitsky, occupied Minsk on the night of February 19-20, 1918 and opened it to German troops. With the permission of the German command, the Belarusian Rada created the Government of the Belarusian People's Republic headed by R. Skirmunt and in March 1918, having annulled the decrees of the Soviet government, announced the separation of Belarus from Russia (until November 1918).

The government of the Central Rada in Ukraine, which did not live up to the hopes of the occupiers, was dispersed, and in its place on April 29, a new government was formed headed by Hetman Skoropadsky.

Romania, which entered the First World War on the side of the Entente and was forced to withdraw its troops under the protection of the Russian army in 1916, was faced with the need to sign a separate peace treaty with the Central Powers in May 1918, however, in the fall of 1918, after the victory of the Entente in the Balkans, it was able to enter among the winners and increase its territory at the expense of Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria.

German troops entered the Don region and occupied Taganrog on May 1, 1918, and Rostov on May 8. Krasnov entered into an alliance with the Germans.

Turkish and German troops invaded Transcaucasia. The Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic ceased to exist, splitting into three parts. On June 4, 1918, Georgia made peace with Turkey.

Beginning of the Entente intervention

Great Britain, France and Italy decided to support anti-Bolshevik forces, Churchill called for “strangling Bolshevism in the cradle.” On November 27, a meeting of the heads of government of these countries recognized the Transcaucasian governments. On December 22, a conference of representatives of the Entente countries in Paris recognized the need to maintain contact with the anti-Bolshevik governments of Ukraine, Cossack regions, Siberia, the Caucasus and Finland and open loans to them. On December 23, an Anglo-French agreement was concluded on the division of spheres of future military operations in Russia: the Caucasus and Cossack regions entered the British zone, Bessarabia, Ukraine and Crimea entered the French zone; Siberia and the Far East were considered a sphere of interest for the United States and Japan.

The Entente declared non-recognition of the Brest-Litovsk Peace, trying to negotiate with the Bolsheviks on the resumption of hostilities against Germany. On March 6, a small English landing force, two companies of marines, landed in Murmansk to prevent the Germans from seizing a huge amount of military cargo delivered by the Allies to Russia, but did not take any hostile actions against the Soviet government (until June 30).

On the night of August 2, 1918, the organization of captain 2nd rank Chaplin (about 500 people) overthrew Soviet power in Arkhangelsk, the 1,000-strong red garrison fled without firing a single shot. Power in the city passed to local government and the creation of the Northern Army began. Then a 2,000-strong English force landed in Arkhangelsk. Members of the Supreme Administration of the Northern Region appointed Chaplin “commander of all naval and land armed forces of the Supreme Administration of the Northern Region.” The armed forces at this time consisted of 5 companies, a squadron and an artillery battery. The units were formed from volunteers. The local peasantry preferred to take a neutral position, and there was little hope for mobilization. Mobilization in the Murmansk region was also unsuccessful.

In the North, the Soviet command creates the Northern Front (commander - former General of the Imperial Army Dmitry Pavlovich Parsky) consisting of the 6th and 7th armies.

Revolt of the Czechoslovak Corps. The unfolding of the war in the East

In response to the murder of two Japanese citizens on April 5, two companies of Japanese and half a company of British landed in Vladivostok, but two weeks later they returned to the ships.

The Czechoslovak Corps was formed on Russian territory during the First World War from prisoners of war of Czechs and Slovaks of the Austro-Hungarian army who wanted to participate in the war on the side of Russia against Austria-Hungary and Germany.

On November 1, 1917, at a meeting of Entente representatives in Iasi, a decision was made to use the corps to fight the Russian revolution; on January 15, 1918, the corps was declared part of the French army and preparations began for the corps (40 thousand people) for transfer from Ukraine through the Far Eastern ports to Western Europe to continue fighting on the side of the Entente. The trains with Czechoslovaks were scattered along the Trans-Siberian Railway over a vast stretch from Penza to Vladivostok, where the bulk of the corps (14 thousand people) had already arrived when on May 20 the corps command refused to obey the Bolshevik government’s demand for disarmament and began active military operations against the red detachments. On May 25, 1918, an uprising of Czechoslovaks broke out in Mariinsk (4.5 thousand people), on May 26 - in Chelyabinsk (8.8 thousand people), after which, with the support of Czechoslovak troops, anti-Bolshevik forces overthrew the Bolshevik power in Novonikolaevsk (May 26), Penza ( May 29), Syzran (May 30), Tomsk (May 31), Kurgan (May 31), Omsk (June 7), Samara (June 8) and Krasnoyarsk (June 18). The formation of Russian combat units began.

On June 8, in Samara liberated from the Reds, the Social Revolutionaries created the Committee of the Constituent Assembly (Komuch). He declared himself a temporary revolutionary government, which, according to the plan of its creators, was supposed to spread over the entire territory of Russia and transfer control of the country to the legally elected Constituent Assembly. In the territory controlled by Komuch, all banks were denationalized in July, and the denationalization of industrial enterprises was announced. Komuch created his own armed forces - the People's Army. At the same time, on June 23, the Provisional Siberian Government was formed in Omsk.

Newly formed on June 9, 1918 in Samara, a detachment of 350 people (consolidated infantry battalion (2 companies, 90 bayonets), cavalry squadron (45 sabers), Volga horse battery (with 2 guns and 150 servants), mounted reconnaissance, demolition team and economic part) Lieutenant Colonel V. O. Kappel took command of the General Staff. Under his command, the detachment in mid-June 1918 took Syzran, Stavropol Volzhsky, and also inflicted a heavy defeat on the Reds near Melekes, throwing them back to Simbirsk and thus securing the capital of KOMUCH Samara. On July 21, Kappel takes Simbirsk, defeating the superior forces of the Soviet commander G.D. Gai defending the city, for which KOMUCH is promoted to colonel; appointed commander of the People's Army.

In July 1918, Russian and Czechoslovak troops also occupied Ufa (July 5), and the Czechs under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Voitsekhovsky took Yekaterinburg on July 25. South of Samara, a detachment of Lieutenant Colonel F.E. Makhin takes Khvalynsk and approaches Volsk. The Ural and Orenburg Cossack troops join the anti-Bolshevik forces of the Volga region.

As a result, by the beginning of August 1918, the “territory of the Constituent Assembly” extended from west to east for 750 versts (from Syzran to Zlatoust, from north to south - 500 versts (from Simbirsk to Volsk). Under its control, in addition to Samara, Syzran , Simbirsk and Stavropol-Volzhsky were also Sengilei, Bugulma, Buguruslan, Belebey, Buzuluk, Birsk, Ufa.

On August 7, 1918, Kappel’s troops, having previously defeated the red river flotilla that came out to meet them at the mouth of the Kama, take Kazan, where they seize part of the gold reserves of the Russian Empire (650 million gold rubles in coins, 100 million rubles in credit notes, gold bars, platinum and other valuables ), as well as huge warehouses with weapons, ammunition, medicines, and ammunition. With the capture of Kazan, the Academy of the General Staff located in the city, headed by General A.I. Andogsky, transferred to the anti-Bolshevik camp in its entirety.

To fight the Czechoslovaks and White Guards, the Soviet command on June 13, 1918 created the Eastern Front under the command of the left Socialist Revolutionary Muravyov, who had six armies under his command.

On July 6, 1918, the Entente declared Vladivostok an international zone. Japanese and American troops landed here. But they did not begin to overthrow the Bolshevik government. Only on July 29, the power of the Bolsheviks was overthrown by the Czechs under the leadership of the Russian general M. K. Diterichs.

In March 1918, a powerful uprising of the Orenburg Cossacks began, led by military foreman D. M. Krasnoyartsev. By the summer of 1918, they defeated the Red Guard units. On July 3, 1918, the Cossacks take Orenburg and eliminate the Bolshevik power in the Orenburg region.

In the Ural region, back in March, the Cossacks easily dispersed the local Bolshevik revolutionary committees and destroyed the Red Guard units sent to suppress the uprising.

In mid-April 1918, the troops of Ataman Semyonov, about 1000 bayonets and sabers, went on the offensive from Manchuria to Transbaikalia, against 5.5 thousand for the Reds. At the same time, an uprising of the Transbaikal Cossacks against the Bolsheviks began. By May, Semenov’s troops approached Chita, but were unable to take it and retreated. The battles between Semyonov’s Cossacks and the red detachments (consisting mainly of former political prisoners and captured Austro-Hungarians) went on in Transbaikalia with varying success until the end of July, when the Cossacks inflicted a decisive defeat on the red troops and took Chita on August 28. Soon the Amur Cossacks drove the Bolsheviks out of their capital, Blagoveshchensk, and the Ussuri Cossacks took Khabarovsk.

By the beginning of September 1918, Bolshevik power was eliminated throughout the Urals, Siberia and the Far East. Anti-Bolshevik rebel groups in Siberia fought under the green and white flag. On May 26, 1918, members of the West Siberian Commissariat of the Siberian Government explained that “according to the resolution of the Extraordinary Siberian Regional Congress, the colors of the flag of Autonomous Siberia, white and green, are established - the emblem of the snows and forests of Siberia.”

In September 1918, the troops of the Soviet Eastern Front (since September the commander was Sergei Kamenev), having concentrated 11 thousand bayonets and sabers near Kazan against the enemy’s 5 thousand, went on the offensive. After fierce battles, they captured Kazan on September 10, and having broken through the front, they then occupied Simbirsk on September 12, and Samara on October 7, inflicting a heavy defeat on the People's Army of KOMUCH.

On August 7, 1918, a workers' uprising broke out at arms factories in Izhevsk and then in Votkinsk. The worker rebels formed their own government and an army of 35 thousand troops. The anti-Bolshevik uprising in Izhevsk-Votkinsk, prepared by the Union of Front-line Soldiers and local Social Revolutionaries, lasted from August to November 1918.

The unfolding of the war in the South

At the end of March, an anti-Bolshevik uprising of Cossacks began on the Don under the leadership of Krasnov, as a result of which by mid-May the Don region was completely cleared of Bolsheviks. On May 10, the Cossacks, together with Drozdovsky’s 1,000-strong detachment that arrived from Romania, occupied the capital of the Don Army, Novocherkassk. After which Krasnov was elected ataman of the All-Great Don Army. The formation of the Don Army began, the number of which by mid-July amounted to 50 thousand people. In July, the Don Army tries to take Tsaritsyn to link up with the Ural Cossacks in the east. In August - September 1918, the Don Army went on the offensive in two more directions: towards Povorino and Voronezh. On September 11, the Soviet command brought its troops to the Southern Front (commanded by former General of the Imperial Army Pavel Pavlovich Sytin) as part of the 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th armies. By October 24, Soviet troops managed to stop the Cossack advance in the Voronezh-Povorinsk direction, and in the Tsaritsyn direction push back Krasnov’s troops beyond the Don.

In June, the 8,000-strong Volunteer Army begins its second campaign (the Second Kuban Campaign) against Kuban, which completely rebelled against the Bolsheviks. General A.I. Denikin successively utterly defeats Kalnin’s 30,000-strong army at Belaya Glina and Tikhoretskaya, then, in a fierce battle near Yekaterinodar, Sorokin’s 30,000-strong army. On July 21, the Whites occupied Stavropol, and on August 17, Yekaterinodar. Blocked on the Taman Peninsula, the 30,000-strong group of Reds under the command of Kovtyukh, the so-called “Taman Army,” along the Black Sea coast fought its way across the Kuban River, where the remnants of the defeated armies of Kalnin and Sorokin fled. By the end of August, the territory of the Kuban army is completely cleared of the Bolsheviks, and the strength of the Volunteer Army reaches 40 thousand bayonets and sabers. The volunteer army begins an offensive in the North Caucasus.

On June 18, 1918, the uprising of the Terek Cossacks began under the leadership of Bicherakhov. The Cossacks defeat the Red troops and blockade their remnants in Grozny and Kizlyar.

On June 8, the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic split into 3 states: Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. German troops land in Georgia; Armenia, having lost most of its territory as a result of the Turkish offensive, makes peace. In Azerbaijan, due to the inability to organize the defense of Baku from the Turkish-Musavat troops, the Bolshevik-Left Socialist Revolutionary Baku Commune transferred power to the Menshevik Central Caspian on July 31 and fled the city.

In the summer of 1918, railway workers rebelled in Askhabad (Trans-Caspian region). They defeated the local Red Guard units, and then defeated and destroyed the punitive forces sent from Tashkent, the Magyars-“internationalists”, after which the uprising spread throughout the entire region. Turkmen tribes began to join the workers. By July 20, the entire Transcaspian region, including the cities of Krasnovodsk, Askhabad and Merv, was in the hands of the rebels. In mid-1918, in Tashkent, a group of former officers, a number of representatives of the Russian intelligentsia and officials of the former administration of the Turkestan region organized an underground organization to fight the Bolsheviks. In August 1918, it received the original name “Turkestan Union of Struggle against Bolshevism”; later it became known as the “Turkestan Military Organization” - TVO, which began to prepare an uprising against Soviet power in Turkestan. However, in October 1918, the special services of the Turkestan Republic made a number of arrests among the leaders of the organization, although some branches of the organization survived and continued to operate. Exactly TVO played an important role in initiating the anti-Bolshevik uprising in Tashkent in January 1919 under the leadership of Konstantin Osipov. After the defeat of this uprising, the officers who left Tashkent formed Tashkent officer partisan detachment numbering up to one hundred people, who from March to April 1919 fought with the Bolsheviks in Fergana as part of anti-Bolshevik formations of local nationalists. During the battles in Turkestan, officers also fought in the troops of the Trans-Caspian government and other anti-Bolshevik formations.

Second period of the war (November 1918-March 1920)

Withdrawal of German troops. The Red Army's advance to the West

In November 1918, the international situation changed dramatically. After the November Revolution, Germany and its allies were defeated in the First World War. In accordance with the secret protocol to the Compiegne Armistice of November 11, 1918, German troops were supposed to remain on Russian territory until the arrival of the Entente troops, however, by agreement with the German command, the territories from which German troops were withdrawn began to be occupied by the Red Army and only in some points (Sevastopol, Odessa) German troops were replaced by Entente troops.

In the territories given to Germany by the Bolsheviks in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, independent states arose: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Poland, Galicia, Ukraine, which, having lost German support, reoriented themselves to the Entente and began forming their own armies. The Soviet government gave the order to advance its troops to occupy the territories of Ukraine, Belarus and the Baltic states. For these purposes, at the beginning of 1919, the Western Front (commander Dmitry Nadezhny) was created as part of the 7th, Latvian, Western armies and the Ukrainian Front (commander Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko). At the same time, Polish troops advanced to capture Lithuania and Belarus. Having defeated the Baltic and Polish troops, by mid-January 1919 the Red Army occupied most of the Baltic states and Belarus and Soviet governments were created there.

In Ukraine, Soviet troops occupied Kharkov, Poltava, Yekaterinoslav in December - January, and Kyiv on February 5. The remnants of the UPR troops under the command of Petliura retreated to the Kamenets-Podolsk region. On April 6, Soviet troops occupied Odessa and by the end of April 1919 captured Crimea. It was planned to provide assistance to the Hungarian Soviet Republic, but due to the White offensive that began in May, the Southern Front required reinforcements, and the Ukrainian Front was disbanded in June.

Battles in the East

On November 7, under the blows of the Special and 2nd Consolidated Red Divisions, consisting of sailors, Latvians and Magyars, the rebel Izhevsk fell, and on November 13, Votkinsk.

The inability to organize resistance to the Bolsheviks caused discontent among the White Guards with the Socialist Revolutionary government. On November 18, in Omsk, a group of officers carried out a coup, as a result of which the Socialist Revolutionary government was dispersed, and power was transferred to Admiral Alexander Vasilyevich Kolchak, popular among the Russian officers, who was declared the Supreme Ruler of Russia. He established a military dictatorship and began to reorganize the army. Kolchak's power was recognized by Russia's Entente allies and most other white governments.

After the coup, the Social Revolutionaries declared Kolchak and the White movement as a whole an enemy worse than Lenin, stopped the fight against the Bolsheviks and began to act against the White power, organizing strikes, riots, acts of terror and sabotage. Since in the army and state apparatus of the Kolchak and other White governments there were many socialists (Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries) and their supporters, and they themselves were popular among the Russian population, especially among the peasantry, the activities of the Socialist Revolutionaries played an important, largely determining, role in the defeat of White movements.

In December 1918, Kolchak’s troops went on the offensive and captured Perm on December 24, but were defeated near Ufa and were forced to stop the offensive. All White Guard troops in the east were united into the Western Front under the command of Kolchak, which included the Western, Siberian, Orenburg and Ural armies.

At the beginning of March 1919, A.V. Kolchak’s well-armed 150,000-strong army launched an offensive from the east, intending to unite in the Vologda region with General Miller’s Northern Army (Siberian Army), and with the main forces to attack Moscow.

At the same time, in the rear of the Eastern Front of the Reds, a powerful peasant uprising (Chapannaya War) against the Bolsheviks began, sweeping the Samara and Simbirsk provinces. The number of rebels reached 150 thousand people. But the poorly organized and armed rebels were defeated by April by regular units of the Red Army and punitive detachments of the ChON, and the uprising was suppressed.

In March-April, Kolchak's troops, having taken Ufa (March 14), Izhevsk and Votkinsk, occupied the entire Urals and fought their way to the Volga, but were soon stopped by superior forces of the Red Army on the approaches to Samara and Kazan. On April 28, 1919, the Reds launched a counteroffensive, during which the Reds occupied Ufa on June 9.

After the completion of the Ufa operation, Kolchak’s troops were pushed back to the foothills of the Urals along the entire front. The Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic, Trotsky, and Commander-in-Chief I. I. Vatsetis proposed to stop the offensive of the armies of the Eastern Front and go on the defensive at the reached point. The Party's Central Committee decisively rejected this proposal. I. I. Vatsetis was relieved of his post and S. S. Kamenev was appointed to the post of commander in chief, and the offensive in the east was continued, despite the sharp complication of the situation in the south of Russia. By August 1919, the Reds captured Yekaterinburg and Chelyabinsk.

On August 11, the Turkestan Front was separated from the Soviet Eastern Front, whose troops, during the Aktobe operation on September 13, united with the troops of the North-Eastern Front of the Turkestan Republic and restored the connection between Central Russia and Central Asia.

In September-October 1919, a decisive battle between the whites and reds took place between the Tobol and Ishim rivers. As on other fronts, the Whites, inferior to the enemy in strength and means, were defeated. After which the front collapsed and the remnants of Kolchak’s army retreated deep into Siberia. Kolchak was characterized by a reluctance to delve deeply into political issues. He sincerely hoped that under the banner of the fight against Bolshevism he would be able to unite the most diverse political forces and create a new solid state power. At this time, the Socialist-Revolutionaries organized a series of revolts in Kolchak’s rear, as a result of which they managed to capture Irkutsk, where the Socialist-Revolutionary Political Center took power, to which on January 15 the Czechoslovaks, among whom pro-Socialist Revolutionary sentiments were strong and had no desire to fight, handed over Admiral Kolchak, who was under their protection .

On January 21, 1920, the Irkutsk Political Center transferred Kolchak to the Bolshevik Revolutionary Committee. Admiral Kolchak was shot on the night of February 6–7, 1920, according to Lenin’s direct order. However, there is other information: the resolution of the Irkutsk Military Revolutionary Committee on the execution of the Supreme Ruler Admiral Kolchak and Chairman of the Council of Ministers Pepelyaev was signed by Shiryamov, the chairman of the committee and its members A. Svoskarev, M. Levenson and Otradny. The Russian units under the command of Kappel, rushing to the admiral’s rescue, were late and, having learned about the death of Kolchak, decided not to storm Irkutsk.

Battles in the South

In January 1919, Krasnov tried to capture Tsaritsyn for the third time, but was again defeated and forced to retreat. Surrounded by the Red Army after the Germans left Ukraine, seeing no help from either the Anglo-French allies or Denikin’s volunteers, under the influence of the anti-war agitation of the Bolsheviks, the Don Army began to disintegrate. The Cossacks began to desert or go over to the side of the Red Army - the front collapsed. The Bolsheviks broke into the Don. Mass terror began against the Cossacks, later called “decossackization.” At the beginning of March, in response to the exterminating terror of the Bolsheviks, a Cossack uprising broke out in the Verkhnedonsky district, called the Vyoshensky uprising. The rebel Cossacks formed an army of 40 thousand bayonets and sabers, including old men and teenagers, and fought in complete encirclement until, on June 8, 1919, units of the Don Army broke through to their aid.

On January 8, 1919, the Volunteer Army became part of the Armed Forces of the South of Russia (AFSR), becoming their main strike force, and its commander, General Denikin, headed the AFSR. By the beginning of 1919, Denikin managed to suppress the Bolshevik resistance in the North Caucasus, subjugate the Cossack troops of the Don and Kuban, effectively removing the pro-German-oriented General Krasnov from power of the ataman of the All-Great Don Army, and receive a large amount of weapons, ammunition, and equipment from the Entente countries through the Black Sea ports. The expansion of assistance to the Entente countries was also made dependent on the recognition by the White movement of new states on the territory of the Russian Empire.

In January 1919, Denikin’s troops finally defeated the 90,000-strong 11th Bolshevik Army and completely captured the North Caucasus. In February, the transfer of volunteer troops to the north, to the Donbass and Don, began to help the retreating units of the Don Army.

All White Guard troops in the south were united into the Armed Forces of the South of Russia under the command of Denikin, which included: the Volunteer, Don, Caucasian armies, the Turkestan Army and the Black Sea Fleet. On January 31, Franco-Greek troops landed in southern Ukraine and occupied Odessa, Kherson and Nikolaev. However, except for the battalion of Greeks that participated in the battles with the troops of Ataman Grigoriev near Odessa, the rest of the Entente troops, without taking part in the battle, were evacuated from Odessa and Crimea in April 1919.

In the spring of 1919, Russia entered the most difficult stage of the Civil War. The Supreme Council of the Entente developed a plan for the next military campaign. This time, as noted in one of the secret documents, the intervention was to “... be expressed in combined military actions of Russian anti-Bolshevik forces and the armies of neighboring allied states...”. The leading role in the upcoming offensive was assigned to the white armies, and the auxiliary role to the troops of small border states - Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland.

In the summer of 1919, the center of the armed struggle moved to the Southern Front. Using the widespread peasant-Cossack uprisings in the rear of the Red Army: Makhno, Grigoriev, the Vyoshensky uprising, the Volunteer Army defeated the Bolshevik forces opposing it and entered the operational space. By the end of June, it occupied Tsaritsyn, Kharkov (see article Volunteer Army in Kharkov), Aleksandrovsk, Yekaterinoslav, Crimea. On June 12, 1919, Denikin officially recognized the power of Admiral Kolchak as the Supreme Ruler of the Russian state and the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Russian armies. On July 3, 1919, Denikin issued the so-called “Moscow Directive,” and already on July 9, the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party published a letter “Everyone to fight Denikin!”, scheduling the start of the counteroffensive for August 15. In order to disrupt the Reds' counter-offensive, a raid was carried out on the rear of their Southern Front by the 4th Don Corps of General K. Mamontov from August 10 to September 19, delaying the Reds' offensive for 2 months. Meanwhile, the white armies continued their offensive: Nikolaev was taken on August 18, Odessa on August 23, Kiev on August 30, Kursk on September 20, Voronezh on September 30, Oryol on October 13. The Bolsheviks were close to disaster and were preparing to go underground. An underground Moscow Party Committee was created, and government institutions began evacuating to Vologda.

A desperate slogan was proclaimed: “Everyone to fight Denikin!”, parts of the AFSR were distracted by Makhno’s raid in Ukraine in the direction of Taganrog, the Reds launched a counter-offensive in the south and were able to split the AFSR into two parts, breaking through to Rostov and Novorossiysk. The southeastern front was renamed the Caucasian Front on January 16, 1920, and Tukhachevsky was appointed commander of it on February 4. The task was set to complete the defeat of General Denikin’s Volunteer Army and capture the North Caucasus before the war with Poland began. In the front line, the number of Red troops was 50 thousand bayonets and sabers versus 46 thousand for the Whites. In turn, General Denikin was also preparing an offensive to capture Rostov and Novocherkassk.

At the beginning of February, Dumenko’s red cavalry corps was completely defeated on Manych, and as a result of the offensive of the Volunteer Corps on February 20, the whites captured Rostov and Novocherkassk, which, according to Denikin, “caused an explosion of exaggerated hopes in Ekaterinodar and Novorossiysk... However, the movement to the north could not receive development, because the enemy was already reaching the deep rear of the Volunteer Corps - towards Tikhoretskaya.” Simultaneously with the advance of the Volunteer Corps, the Shock Group of the Red 10th Army broke through the White defenses in the zone of responsibility of the unstable and decaying Kuban Army, and the 1st Cavalry Army was introduced into the breakthrough to build on the success of Tikhoretskaya. The cavalry group of General Pavlov (2nd and 4th Don Corps) was advanced against it, which on February 25 was defeated in a fierce battle near Yegorlytskaya (15 thousand Reds against 10 thousand Whites), which decided the fate of the battle for Kuban.

On March 1, the Volunteer Corps left Rostov, and the White armies began to retreat to the Kuban River. The Cossack units of the Kuban armies (the most unstable part of the AFSR) finally disintegrated and began en masse to surrender to the Reds or go over to the side of the “greens,” which led to the collapse of the White front, the retreat of the remnants of the Volunteer Army to Novorossiysk, and from there on March 26-27, 1920 departure by sea to Crimea.

The success of the Tikhoretsk operation allowed the Reds to move on to the Kuban-Novorossiysk operation, during which on March 17, the 9th Army of the Caucasian Front under the command of I.P. Uborevich captured Yekaterinodar, crossed the Kuban and captured Novorossiysk on March 27. “The main result of the North Caucasus strategic offensive operation was the final defeat of the main grouping of the Armed Forces of southern Russia.”

On January 4, A.V. Kolchak transferred his powers as the Supreme Ruler of Russia to A.I. Denikin, and power in the territory of Siberia to General G.M. Semenov. However, Denikin, given the difficult military-political situation of the white forces, did not officially accept the powers. Faced with the intensification of opposition sentiments among the white movement after the defeat of his troops, Denikin resigned as Commander-in-Chief of the V.S.Yu.R. on April 4, 1920, transferred command to General Baron P.N. Wrangel and on the same day on the English battleship The “Emperor of India” departed with his friend, comrade-in-arms and former chief of staff of the Commander-in-Chief of the AFSR, General I. P. Romanovsky, to England with an intermediate stop in Constantinople, where the latter was shot dead in the building of the Russian embassy in Constantinople by Lieutenant M. A. Kharuzin, a former employee counterintelligence V.S.Yu.R.

Yudenich's attack on Petrograd

In January 1919, the “Russian Political Committee” was created in Helsingfors under the chairmanship of cadet Kartashev. Oil industrialist Stepan Georgievich Lianozov, who took over the financial affairs of the committee, received about 2 million marks from Finnish banks for the needs of the future northwestern government. The organizer of military activities was Nikolai Yudenich, who planned the creation of a united Northwestern Front against the Bolsheviks, based on the self-proclaimed Baltic states and Finland, with the financial and military assistance of the British.

The national governments of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which at the beginning of 1919 held only minor territories, reorganized their armies and, with the support of Russian and German units, began active offensive operations. During 1919, Bolshevik power in the Baltic states was eliminated.

On June 10, 1919, Yudenich was appointed by A.V. Kolchak as commander-in-chief of all Russian ground and naval armed forces operating against the Bolsheviks on the North-Western Front. On August 11, 1919, the Government of the North-Western Region was created in Tallinn (Chairman of the Council of Ministers, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Finance - Stepan Lianozov, Minister of War - Nikolai Yudenich, Minister of Marine - Vladimir Pilkin, etc.). On the same day, the Government of the North-Western Region, under pressure from the British, who promised weapons and equipment for the army for this recognition, recognized the state independence of Estonia and subsequently negotiated with Finland. However, the all-Russian government of Kolchak refused to consider the separatist demands of the Finns and Balts. To Yudenich’s request about the possibility of fulfilling the demands of K. G. E. Mannerheim (which included demands for the annexation of the Pechenga Bay region and western Karelia to Finland), with which Yudenich basically agreed, Kolchak refused, and the Russian representative in Paris S. D. Sazonov stated that “the Baltic provinces cannot be recognized as an independent state. Likewise, the fate of Finland cannot be decided without the participation of Russia...”

After the creation of the Northwestern Government and its recognition of Estonia's independence, Great Britain provided financial assistance to the Northwestern Army in the amount of 1 million rubles, 150 thousand pounds sterling, 1 million francs; in addition, minor supplies of weapons and ammunition were made. By September 1919, British assistance to Yudenich's army with weapons and ammunition amounted to 10 thousand rifles, 20 guns, several armored vehicles, 39 thousand shells, several million cartridges.

N.N. Yudenich launched two offensives against Petrograd (in spring and autumn). As a result of the May offensive, the Northern Corps occupied Gdov, Yamburg and Pskov, but by August 26, as a result of the Red counter-offensive of the 7th and 15th armies of the Western Front, the Whites were forced out of these cities. Then, on August 26, a decision was made in Riga to attack Petrograd on September 15. However, after the Soviet government proposed (August 31 and September 11) to begin peace negotiations with the Baltic republics on the basis of recognition of their independence, Yudenich lost the help of his allies, part of the forces of the red Western Front was transferred to the south against Denikin. Yudenich's autumn offensive on Petrograd was unsuccessful, the North-Western Army was forced into Estonia, where after the signing of the Tartu Peace Treaty between the RSFSR and Estonia, 15 thousand soldiers and officers of Yudenich's North-Western Army were first disarmed, and then 5 thousand of them were captured and sent away to concentration camps. The slogan of the White movement about “United and indivisible Russia”, that is, non-recognition of separatist regimes, deprived Yudenich of support not only from Estonia, but also from Finland, which never provided any assistance to the North-Western Army in its battles near Petrograd. And after the change of the Mannerheim government in 1919, Finland completely set a course for normalizing relations with the Bolsheviks, and President Stolberg banned the formation of military units of the Russian White movement on the territory of his country, and then the plan for a joint offensive of the Russian and Finnish armies on Petrograd was finally buried. These events went in the general direction of mutual recognition and settlement of relations between Soviet Russia and the newly independent states - similar processes had already taken place in the Baltic states.

Battles in the North

The formation of the White Army in the North took place politically in the most difficult situation, since here it was created in conditions of the dominance of left-wing (Socialist-Revolutionary-Menshevik) elements in the political leadership (suffice it to say that the government fiercely opposed even the introduction of shoulder straps).

By mid-November 1918, Major General N.I. Zvyagintsev (commander of the troops in the Murmansk region under both the Whites and the Reds) managed to form only two companies. In November 1918, Zvegintsev was replaced by Colonel Nagornov. By that time, partisan detachments were already operating in the Northern Territory, near Murmansk, under the leadership of front-line officers from local natives. There were several hundred such officers, most of whom came from local peasants, such as the brothers ensigns A. and P. Burkov, in the Northern Region. Most of them were strongly anti-Bolshevik, and the fight against the Reds was quite fierce. In addition, the Olonets Volunteer Army operated in Karelia, from the territory of Finland.

Major General V.V. Marushevsky was temporarily appointed to the post of commander of all troops of Arkhangelsk and Murmansk. After the re-registration of army officers, about two thousand people were registered. In Kholmogory, Shenkursk and Onega, Russian volunteers joined the French Foreign Legion. As a result, by January 1919 the White Army already numbered about 9 thousand bayonets and sabers. In November 1918, the anti-Bolshevik government of the Northern Region invited General Miller to take the post of Governor-General of the Northern Region, and Marushevsky remained as commander of the White troops of the region with the rights of an army commander. On January 1, 1919, Miller arrived in Arkhangelsk, where he was appointed manager of foreign affairs of the government, and on January 15 he became governor-general of the Northern Region (which recognized the supreme power of A.V. Kolchak on April 30). Since May 1919, at the same time, commander-in-chief of the troops of the Northern region - the Northern Army, since June - commander-in-chief of the Northern Front. In September 1919, he simultaneously accepted the post of Chief Commander of the Northern Territory.

However, the growth of the army outpaced the growth of the officer corps. By the summer of 1919, only 600 officers served in the already 25 thousand strong army. The shortage of officers was aggravated by the practice of recruiting captured Red Army soldiers into the army (who made up more than half of the units' personnel). British and Russian military schools were organized to train officers. The Slavic-British Aviation Corps, the Arctic Ocean flotilla, a fighter division in the White Sea, and river flotillas (North Dvina and Pechora) were created. The armored trains “Admiral Kolchak” and “Admiral Nepenin” were also built. However, the combat effectiveness of the mobilized troops of the Northern Region still remained low. There were frequent cases of desertion of soldiers, disobedience and even murder of officers and soldiers from Allied units. Mass desertion also led to mutinies: “3 thousand infantrymen (in the 5th Northern Rifle Regiment) and 1 thousand military personnel of other branches of the army with four 75-mm guns went over to the Bolshevik side.” Miller relied on the support of the British military contingent, which took part in hostilities against units of the Red Army. The commander of the Allied forces in northern Russia, disappointed in the combat effectiveness of the troops of the Northern region, said in his report that: “The condition of the Russian troops is such that all my efforts to strengthen the Russian national army are doomed to failure. It is now necessary to evacuate as quickly as possible, unless the number of British forces here is increased." By the end of 1919, Britain had largely withdrawn its support for anti-Bolshevik governments in Russia, and at the end of September the Allies evacuated Arkhangelsk. W. E. Ironside (Commander-in-Chief of the Allied Forces) suggested that Miller evacuate the Northern Army. Miller refused “... due to the combat situation... he ordered to hold the Arkhangelsk region to the last extreme...”.

After the British left, Miller continued the fight against the Bolsheviks. To strengthen the army, on August 25, 1919, the Provisional Government of the Northern Region carried out another mobilization, as a result of which by February 1920, the troops of the Northern Region numbered 1,492 officers, 39,822 combatants and 13,456 non-combatant lower ranks - a total of 54.7 thousand people with 161 guns and 1.6 thousand machine guns, and in the national militia - up to 10 thousand more people. In the fall of 1919, the White Northern Army launched an offensive on the Northern Front and Komi Territory. In a relatively short time, the whites managed to occupy vast territories. After Kolchak's retreat to the east, parts of Kolchak's Siberian army were transferred under the command of Miller. In December 1919, captain-captain Chervinsky launched an attack on the Reds in the vicinity of the village. Narykary. On December 29, in a telegraphic report to Izhma (headquarters of the 10th Pechora Regiment) and Arkhangelsk, he wrote:

However, in December the Reds launched a counter-offensive, occupied Shenkursk and came close to Arkhangelsk. On February 24-25, 1920, most of the Northern Army capitulated. On February 19, 1920, Miller was forced to emigrate. Together with General Miller, more than 800 military personnel and civilian refugees, placed on the icebreaker steamship Kozma Minin, the icebreaker Canada, and the yacht Yaroslavna, left Russia. Despite obstacles in the form of ice fields and pursuit (with artillery shelling) by ships of the Red Fleet, the white sailors managed to bring their detachment to Norway, where they arrived on February 26. The last battles in Komi took place on March 6-9, 1920. The White detachment retreated from Troitsko-Pechersk to Ust-Shchugor. On March 9, Red units that arrived from near the Urals surrounded Ust-Shchugor, in which there was a group of officers under the command of Captain Shulgin. The garrison capitulated. The officers under escort were sent to Cherdyn. On the way, the officers were shot by their guards. Despite the fact that the population of the north sympathized with the ideas of the white movement, and the Northern Army was well armed, the white army in northern Russia collapsed under the attacks of the Reds. This was a result of the low number of experienced officers, and the presence of a significant number of former Red Army soldiers who had no desire to fight for the provisional government of the distant northern region.

Allied supplies to White

After Germany's defeat in the First World War, England, France and the United States largely reoriented from a direct military presence to economic assistance to the governments of Kolchak and Denikin. The US Consul in Vladivostok Caldwell was informed: “ The government officially accepted the obligation to help Kolchak with equipment and food..." The United States transfers to Kolchak loans issued and unused by the Provisional Government in the amount of $262 million, as well as weapons worth $110 million. In the first half of 1919, Kolchak received from the United States more than 250 thousand rifles, thousands of guns and machine guns. The Red Cross is supplying 300 thousand sets of linen and other equipment. On May 20, 1919, 640 wagons and 11 locomotives were sent from Vladivostok to Kolchak, on June 10 - 240,000 pairs of boots, on June 26 - 12 locomotives with spare parts, on July 3 - two hundred guns with shells, on July 18 - 18 locomotives, etc. This only individual facts. However, when in the fall of 1919 rifles purchased by the Kolchak government in the USA began to arrive in Vladivostok on American ships, Graves refused to send them further by rail. He justified his actions by the fact that the weapons could fall into the hands of the units of Ataman Kalmykov, who, according to Graves, with the moral support of the Japanese, was preparing to attack the American units. Under pressure from other allies, he nevertheless sent weapons to Irkutsk.

During the winter of 1918-1919, hundreds of thousands of rifles were delivered (250-400 thousand to Kolchak and up to 380 thousand to Denikin), tanks, trucks (about 1 thousand), armored cars and aircraft, ammunition and uniforms for several hundred thousand people. The head of supply for the Kolchak army, English General Alfred Knox, stated:

At the same time, the Entente raised before the White governments the question of the need compensation for this help. General Denikin testifies:

and quite rightly concludes that “this was no longer aid, but simply commodity exchange and trade.”

The supply of weapons and equipment to the Whites was sometimes sabotaged by Entente workers who sympathized with the Bolsheviks. A. I. Kuprin wrote in his memoirs about the supply of Yudenich’s army by the British:

After the conclusion of the Treaty of Versailles (1919), which formalized Germany’s defeat in the war, the assistance of the Western allies to the White movement, who saw it primarily as fighters against the Bolshevik government, gradually ceased. Thus, British Prime Minister Lloyd George, shortly after a failed attempt (in the interests of England) to bring the Whites and Reds to the negotiating table on the Princes' Islands, spoke in the following vein:

Lloyd George bluntly stated in October 1919 that “the Bolsheviks should be recognized, because you can trade with cannibals.”

According to Denikin, there was a “final refusal to fight and to help the anti-Bolshevik forces at the most difficult moment for us... France divided its attention between the Armed Forces of the South, Ukraine, Finland and Poland, providing more serious support only to Poland and, only to save it subsequently entered into closer relations with the command of the South in the final, Crimean period of the struggle... As a result, we did not receive real help from her: neither solid diplomatic support, especially important in relation to Poland, nor credit, nor supplies.”

Third period of the war (March 1920—October 1922)

On April 25, 1920, the Polish army, equipped with funds from France, invaded Soviet Ukraine and captured Kyiv on May 6. The head of the Polish state, J. Pilsudski, hatched a plan to create a confederal state “from sea to sea,” which would include the territories of Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, and Lithuania. However, this plan was not destined to come true. On May 14, a successful counter-offensive began by the troops of the Western Front (commander M. N. Tukhachevsky), on May 26 - the South-Western Front (commander A. I. Egorov). In mid-July they approached the borders of Poland.

The Politburo of the Central Committee of the RCP(b), having clearly overestimated its own strength and underestimated the enemy’s, set a new strategic task for the command of the Red Army: to enter the territory of Poland with fighting, take its capital and create conditions for the proclamation of Soviet power in the country. Trotsky, who knew the state of the Red Army, wrote in his memoirs:

“There were fervent hopes for an uprising of the Polish workers... Lenin had a firm plan: to bring the matter to an end, that is, to enter Warsaw in order to help the Polish working masses to overthrow the Pilsudski government and seize power... I found in the center a very firm mood in favor of bringing the war to an end." to end". I strongly opposed this. The Poles have already asked for peace. I believed that we had reached the culmination of success, and if we went further without calculating our strength, we could pass by the victory we had already won - to defeat. After the colossal effort, which allowed the 4th Army to cover 650 kilometers in five weeks, it could move forward only by the force of inertia. Everything was hanging on my nerves, and these are too thin threads. One strong push was enough to shake our front and turn a completely unheard of and unprecedented... offensive impulse into a catastrophic retreat.”

Despite Trotsky's opinion, Lenin and almost all members of the Politburo rejected Trotsky's proposal to immediately conclude peace with Poland. The attack on Warsaw was entrusted to the Western Front, and on Lviv to the South-Western Front, led by Alexander Egorov.

According to the statements of the Bolshevik leaders, in general, this was an attempt to advance the “red bayonet” deeper into Europe and thereby “stir up the Western European proletariat” and push it to support the world revolution.

This attempt ended in disaster. The troops of the Western Front in August 1920 were completely defeated near Warsaw (the so-called “Miracle on the Vistula”), and rolled back. During the battle, of the five armies of the Western Front, only the third survived, which managed to retreat. The remaining armies were destroyed: the Fourth Army and part of the Fifteenth fled to East Prussia and were interned, the Mozyr Group, the Fifteenth, Sixteenth armies were surrounded or defeated. More than 120 thousand Red Army soldiers (up to 200 thousand) were captured, most of them captured during the battle of Warsaw, and another 40 thousand soldiers were in East Prussia in internment camps. This defeat of the Red Army is the most catastrophic in the history of the Civil War. According to Russian sources, subsequently about 80 thousand Red Army soldiers from the total number of those captured by Poland died from hunger, disease, torture, bullying and execution. Negotiations on the transfer of part of the captured property to Wrangel’s army did not lead to any results due to the refusal of the leadership of the White movement to recognize the independence of Poland. In October, the parties concluded a truce, and in March 1921, a peace treaty. Under its terms, a significant part of the lands in western Ukraine and Belarus with 10 million Ukrainians and Belarusians went to Poland.

Neither side achieved its goals during the war: Belarus and Ukraine were divided between Poland and the republics that became part of the Soviet Union in 1922. The territory of Lithuania was divided between Poland and the independent state of Lithuania. The RSFSR, for its part, recognized the independence of Poland and the legitimacy of the Pilsudski government, and temporarily abandoned plans for a “world revolution” and the elimination of the Versailles system. Despite the signing of a peace treaty, relations between the two countries remained tense for the next twenty years, which ultimately led to the Soviet participation in the partition of Poland in 1939.

Disagreements between the Entente countries that arose in 1920 on the issue of military-financial support for Poland led to the gradual cessation of support by these countries for the White movement and anti-Bolshevik forces in general, and subsequent international recognition of the Soviet Union.

Crimea

At the height of the Soviet-Polish war, Baron P. N. Wrangel took active action in the south. Using harsh measures, including public executions of demoralized officers, the general turned Denikin's scattered divisions into a disciplined and combat-ready army.

After the outbreak of the Soviet-Polish War, the Russian Army (former V.S.Yu.R.), which had recovered from the unsuccessful attack on Moscow, set out from the Crimea and occupied Northern Tavria by mid-June. Crimea's resources by that time were practically exhausted. Wrangel was forced to rely on France for the supply of weapons and ammunition, since England stopped helping the whites back in 1919.

On August 14, 1920, a landing party (4.5 thousand bayonets and sabers) was landed from the Crimea on Kuban under the leadership of General S. G. Ulagai, with the goal of connecting with numerous rebels and opening a second front against the Bolsheviks. But the initial successes of the landing, when the Cossacks, having defeated the Red units thrown against them, had already reached the approaches to Yekaterinodar, could not be developed due to the mistakes of Ulagai, who, contrary to the original plan for a rapid attack on the capital of Kuban, stopped the offensive and began regrouping troops, which allowed the Reds bring up reserves, create a numerical advantage and blockade parts of Ulagai. The Cossacks fought back to the coast of the Azov Sea, to Achuev, from where they evacuated (September 7) to the Crimea, taking with them 10 thousand rebels who joined them. The few landings that landed on Taman and in the Abrau-Durso area to divert the forces of the Red Army from the main Ulagaev landing were taken back to Crimea after stubborn battles. Fostikov’s 15,000-strong partisan army, operating in the Armavir-Maikop area, was unable to break through to help the landing party.

In July-August, the main forces of Wrangel fought successful defensive battles in Northern Tavria, in particular, completely destroying the Zhloba cavalry corps. After the failure of the landing on Kuban, realizing that the army blocked in the Crimea was doomed, Wrangel decided to break the encirclement and break through to meet the advancing Polish army. Before moving the fighting to the right bank of the Dnieper, Wrangel sent units of the Russian Army to the Donbass in order to defeat the Red Army units operating there and not allow them to hit the rear of the main forces of the White Army preparing for an attack on the Right Bank, which they successfully dealt with. On October 3, the White offensive began on the Right Bank. But the initial success could not be developed and on October 15, the Wrangel troops retreated to the left bank of the Dnieper.

Meanwhile, the Poles, contrary to the promises made to Wrangel, concluded a truce with the Bolsheviks on October 12, 1920, who immediately began to transfer troops from the Polish front against the White Army. On October 28, units of the Red Southern Front under the command of M.V. Frunze launched a counter-offensive with the goal of encircling and defeating the Russian army of General Wrangel in Northern Tavria, preventing it from retreating to the Crimea. But the planned encirclement failed. By November 3, the main part of Wrangel’s army retreated to the Crimea, where it consolidated on prepared defense lines.

M. V. Frunze, having concentrated about 190 thousand soldiers against 41 thousand bayonets and sabers at Wrangel, began the assault on the Crimea on November 7. On November 11, Frunze wrote an appeal to General Wrangel, which was broadcast by the front radio station:

To the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the South of Russia, General Wrangel. In view of the obvious futility of further resistance of your troops, which only threatens to shed unnecessary streams of blood, I propose that you stop resistance and surrender with all army and navy troops, military supplies, equipment, weapons and all kinds of military property. If you accept this proposal, the Revolutionary Military Council of the Armies of the Southern Front, on the basis of the powers granted to it by the central Soviet government, guarantees to those who surrender, including senior command personnel, full forgiveness for all offenses related to the civil struggle. All those who do not want to stay and work in socialist Russia will be given the opportunity to travel abroad without hindrance, provided they renounce on their word of honor any further struggle against workers' and peasants' Russia and Soviet power. I expect a response until 24 hours on November 11. Moral responsibility for all possible consequences if an honest offer is rejected falls on you. Commander of the Southern Front Mikhail Frunze

After the text of the radio telegram was reported to Wrangel, he ordered the closure of all radio stations except one operated by officers in order to prevent the troops from becoming familiar with Frunze’s address. No response was sent.

Despite the significant superiority in manpower and weapons, the Red troops could not break the defense of the Crimean defenders for several days, and only on November 11, when units of the Makhnovists under the command of S. Karetnik defeated Barbovich’s cavalry corps near Karpova Balka, the White defense was broken through. The Red Army broke into Crimea. The evacuation of the Russian army and civilians began. Over the course of three days, 126 ships loaded troops, families of officers, and part of the civilian population of the Crimean ports of Sevastopol, Yalta, Feodosia and Kerch.

On November 12, Dzhankoy was taken by the Reds, on November 13 - Simferopol, on November 15 - Sevastopol, on November 16 - Kerch.

After the seizure of Crimea by the Bolsheviks, mass executions of the civilian and military population of the peninsula began. According to eyewitnesses, from November 1920 to March 1921, from 15 to 120 thousand people were killed.

On November 14-16, 1920, an Armada of ships flying the St. Andrew's flag left the shores of Crimea, taking white regiments and tens of thousands of civilian refugees to a foreign land. The total number of voluntary exiles was 150 thousand people.

On November 21, 1920, the fleet was reorganized into the Russian squadron, consisting of four detachments. Rear Admiral Kedrov was appointed its commander. On December 1, 1920, the French Council of Ministers agreed to send the Russian squadron to the city of Bizerte in Tunisia. An army of about 50 thousand soldiers was retained as a combat unit based on new Kuban campaign until September 1, 1924, when the Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Army, General Baron P. N. Wrangel, transformed it into the Russian All-Military Union.

With the fall of the White Crimea, organized resistance to Bolshevik rule in the European part of Russia came to an end. On the agenda for the red “dictatorship of the proletariat” was the issue of fighting the peasant uprisings that swept throughout Russia and were directed against this government.

Uprisings behind the Red lines

By the beginning of 1921, peasant uprisings, which had not stopped since 1918, developed into real peasant wars, which was facilitated by the demobilization of the Red Army, as a result of which millions of men familiar with military affairs came from the army. These wars covered the Tambov region, Ukraine, Don, Kuban, Volga region and Siberia. The peasants demanded a change in agrarian policy, the elimination of the dictates of the RCP (b), and the convening of a Constituent Assembly on the basis of universal equal suffrage. Regular units of the Red Army with artillery, armored vehicles and aviation were sent to suppress these uprisings.

Discontent also spread to the armed forces. In February 1921, strikes and protest rallies by workers with political and economic demands began in Petrograd. The Petrograd Committee of the RCP(b) qualified the unrest in the factories of the city as a rebellion and introduced martial law in the city, arresting worker activists. But Kronstadt became worried.

On March 1, 1921, sailors and Red Army soldiers of the military fortress of Kronstadt (garrison of 26 thousand people) under the slogan “For Soviets without communists!” passed a resolution to support the workers of Petrograd and demanded the release from prison of all representatives of socialist parties, re-election of the Soviets and, as the slogan implies, the expulsion of all communists from them, granting freedom of speech, meetings and unions to all parties, ensuring freedom of trade, allowing handicraft production to be labor, allowing peasants to freely use their land and dispose of the products of their farms, that is, the elimination of the grain monopoly. Convinced of the impossibility of reaching an agreement with the sailors, the authorities began to prepare to suppress the uprising.

On March 5, the 7th Army was restored under the command of Mikhail Tukhachevsky, who was ordered to “suppress the uprising in Kronstadt as soon as possible.” On March 7, 1921, troops began shelling Kronstadt. The leader of the uprising, S. Petrichenko, later wrote: “ Standing waist-deep in the blood of the working people, the bloody Field Marshal Trotsky was the first to open fire on the revolutionary Kronstadt, which rebelled against the rule of the Communists to restore the true power of the Soviets».

On March 8, 1921, on the opening day of the Tenth Congress of the RCP(b), units of the Red Army stormed Kronstadt. But the assault was repulsed, suffering heavy losses, and the punitive troops retreated to their original lines. Sharing the demands of the rebels, many Red Army soldiers and army units refused to participate in the suppression of the uprising. Mass executions began. For the second assault, the most loyal units were drawn to Kronstadt; even delegates from the party congress were thrown into battle. On the night of March 16, after intense artillery shelling of the fortress, a new assault began. Thanks to the tactics of shooting the retreating barrage detachments and the advantage in forces and means, Tukhachevsky’s troops broke into the fortress, fierce street battles began, and only by the morning of March 18 was the resistance of the Kronstadters broken. Most of the defenders of the fortress died in battle, another went to Finland (8 thousand), the rest surrendered (2,103 of them were shot according to the verdicts of the revolutionary tribunals).

From the appeal of the Provisional Revolutionary Committee of Kronstadt:

Comrades and citizens! Our country is going through a difficult moment. Hunger, cold, and economic devastation have been holding us in an iron grip for three years now. The Communist Party, which rules the country, has become disconnected from the masses and has been unable to bring it out of the state of general devastation. It did not take into account the unrest that had recently occurred in Petrograd and Moscow and which quite clearly indicated that the party had lost the trust of the working masses. It also did not take into account the demands made by the workers. She considers them the machinations of counter-revolution. She is deeply mistaken. These unrest, these demands are the voice of all the people, all the working people. All workers, sailors and Red Army soldiers clearly see at the moment that only through common efforts, the common will of the working people, can we give the country bread, firewood, coal, clothe the shoeless and undressed, and lead the republic out of the dead end...

All these uprisings convincingly showed that the Bolsheviks had no support in society.

The Bolshevik policy (later called “war communism”): dictatorship, grain monopoly, terror - led the Bolshevik regime to collapse, but Lenin, in spite of everything, believed that only with the help of such a policy would the Bolsheviks be able to retain power in their hands.

Therefore, Lenin and his followers persisted in pursuing the policy of “war communism” to the last. Only by the spring of 1921, it became obvious that the general discontent of the lower classes, their armed pressure, could lead to the overthrow of the power of the Soviets led by the Communists. Therefore, Lenin decided to make a concession maneuver in order to maintain power. The “New Economic Policy” was introduced, which largely satisfied the bulk of the country’s population (85%), that is, the small peasantry. The regime concentrated on eliminating the last centers of armed resistance: in the Caucasus, Central Asia and the Far East.

Red operations in Transcaucasia and Central Asia

In April 1920, Soviet troops of the Turkestan Front defeated the Whites in Semirechye, in the same month Soviet power was established in Azerbaijan, in September 1920 - in Bukhara, in November 1920 - in Armenia. In February, peace treaties were signed with Persia and Afghanistan, and in March 1921, a peace treaty on friendship and brotherhood was signed with Turkey. At the same time, Soviet power was established in Georgia.

The last pockets of resistance in the Far East

Fearing the intensification of Japanese forces in the Far East, the Bolsheviks, at the beginning of 1920, suspended the advance of their troops to the east. On the territory of the Far East from Lake Baikal to the Pacific Ocean, the puppet Far Eastern Republic (FER) was formed with its capital in Verkhneudinsk (now Ulan-Ude). In April - May 1920, the Bolshevik NRA troops twice tried to change the situation in Transbaikalia in their favor, but due to lack of forces, both operations ended unsuccessfully. By the fall of 1920, Japanese troops, thanks to the diplomatic efforts of the puppet Far Eastern Republic, were withdrawn from Transbaikalia, and during the third Chita operation (October 1920), troops of the Amur Front of the NRA and partisans defeated the Cossack troops of Ataman Semyonov, occupied Chita on October 22, 1920, and completed the capture of Transbaikalia in early November . The remnants of the defeated White Guard troops retreated to Manchuria. At the same time, Japanese troops were evacuated from Khabarovsk.

On May 26, 1921, as a result of a coup, power in Vladivostok and Primorye passed to supporters of the white movement, who created a state entity in this territory controlled by the Provisional Amur Government (in Soviet historiography it was called the “Black Buffer”). The Japanese took neutrality. In November 1921, the White Rebel Army began advancing from Primorye to the north. On December 22, White Guard troops occupied Khabarovsk and advanced west to the Volochaevka station of the Amur Railway. But due to a lack of forces and means, the White offensive was stopped, and they went on the defensive on the Volochaevka - Verkhnespasskaya line, creating a fortified area here.

On February 5, 1922, units of the NRA under the command of Vasily Blucher went on the offensive, drove back the advanced units of the enemy, reached the fortified area, and on February 10 began an assault on the Volochaev positions. For three days, in 35-degree frost and deep snow cover, NRA fighters continuously attacked the enemy until his defenses were broken on February 12.

On February 14, the NRA occupied Khabarovsk. As a result, the White Guards retreated beyond the neutral zone under the cover of Japanese troops.

In September 1922, they again tried to go on the offensive. On October 4 - 25, 1922, the Primorye Operation was carried out - the last major operation of the Civil War. Having repelled the offensive of the White Guard Zemstvo army under the command of Lieutenant General Diterichs, the NRA troops under the command of Uborevich launched a counteroffensive.

On October 8-9, the Spassky fortified area was taken by storm. On October 13-14, in cooperation with partisans on the approaches to Nikolsk-Ussuriysk (now Ussuriysk), the main White Guard forces were defeated, and on October 19, NRA troops reached Vladivostok, where up to 20 thousand Japanese troops were still located.

On October 24, the Japanese command was forced to enter into an agreement with the government of the Far East on the withdrawal of its troops from the Far East.

On October 25, NRA units and partisans entered Vladivostok. The remnants of the White Guard troops were evacuated abroad.

Fights of Bakich's detachment in Mongolia

In April 1921, the insurgent People's Division of the cornet (then colonel) Tokarev (about 1,200 people) who had withdrawn from Siberia joined Bakich's detachment (the former Orenburg army reorganized after the retreat to China in 1920). In May 1921, due to the threat of encirclement by the Reds, a detachment led by A. S. Bakich moved east to Mongolia through the waterless steppes of Dzungaria (some historians call these events the Hunger March). Bakich’s main slogan was: “Down with the communists, long live the power of free labor.” Bakich's program said that.

At the Kobuk River, an almost unarmed detachment (out of 8 thousand combat-ready people there were no more than 600, of which only a third were armed) broke through the Red barrier, reached the city of Shara-Sume and occupied it after a three-week siege, losing more than 1000 people. At the beginning of September 1921, over 3 thousand people surrendered here to the Reds, and the rest went to the Mongolian Altai. After the battles at the end of October, the remnants of the corps surrendered to the “red” Mongolian troops near Ulankom, and in 1922 they were extradited to Soviet Russia. Most of them were killed or died on the way, and A. S. Bakich and 5 other officers (General I. I. Smolnin-Tervand, Colonels S. G. Tokarev and I. Z. Sizukhin, Staff Captain Kozminykh and Cornet Shegabetdinov ) at the end of May 1922 were shot after a trial in Novonikolaevsk. However, 350 people. hid in the Mongolian steppes and with Colonel Kochnev they went to Gucheng, from where they scattered throughout China until the summer of 1923.

Reasons for the Bolshevik victory in the Civil War

The reasons for the defeat of anti-Bolshevik elements in the Civil War have been discussed by historians for many decades. In general, it is obvious that the main reason was the political and geographical fragmentation and disunity of the whites and the inability of the leaders of the white movement to unite under their banner all those dissatisfied with Bolshevism. Numerous national and regional governments did not have the ability to fight the Bolsheviks alone, and they also could not create a strong united anti-Bolshevik front due to mutual territorial and political claims and contradictions. The majority of the population of Russia was the peasantry, who did not want to leave their lands and serve in any armies: neither the Reds nor the Whites, and despite the hatred of the Bolsheviks, they preferred to fight them on their own, based on their immediate interests, which is why the suppression of numerous peasant uprisings and uprisings did not pose strategic problems for the Bolsheviks. At the same time, the Bolsheviks often had support among the rural poor, who positively perceived the idea of ​​“class struggle” with their more prosperous neighbors. The presence of “green” and “black” gangs and movements, which, having arisen in the rear of the whites, diverted significant forces from the front and ruined the population, led, in the eyes of the population, to erasing the difference between being under the reds or the whites, and generally demoralized the whites army. Denikin’s government did not have time to fully implement the land reform he developed, which was supposed to be based on the strengthening of small and medium-sized farms at the expense of state-owned and landed estates. A temporary Kolchak law was in force, prescribing, until the Constituent Assembly, the preservation of land for those owners in whose hands it was actually located. The violent seizure of their lands by the former owners was sharply suppressed. Nevertheless, such incidents still occurred, which, together with the looting inevitable in any war in the front-line zone, provided food for Red propaganda and pushed the peasantry away from the White camp.

The Whites' allies from the Entente countries also did not have a single goal and, despite the intervention in some port cities, did not provide the Whites with enough military equipment to conduct successful military operations, not to mention any serious support from their troops. In his memoirs, Wrangel describes the situation that developed in the south of Russia in 1920.

...The poorly supplied army fed exclusively from the population, placing an unbearable burden on it. Despite the large influx of volunteers from places newly occupied by the army, its numbers hardly increased... Many months of drawn-out negotiations between the main command and the governments of the Cossack regions still did not lead to positive results and a number of the most important vital issues remained without resolution. ...Relations with the closest neighbors were hostile. The support provided to us by the British, given the duplicitous policy of the British government, could not be considered adequately ensured. As for France, whose interests seemed to coincide most with ours, and whose support seemed especially valuable to us, then here too we were unable to establish strong ties. The special delegation that had just returned from Paris ... not only did not produce any significant results, but ... it met with a more than indifferent reception and passed through Paris almost unnoticed.

Notes. Book One (Wrangel)/Chapter IV

Red's point of view

Like the Whites, V.I. Lenin saw the main condition for the victories of the Bolsheviks in the fact that throughout the Civil War, “international imperialism” was unable to organize general hike everyone of its forces against Soviet Russia, and at each individual stage of the struggle it was only Part their. They were strong enough to pose mortal threats to the Soviet state, but always proved too weak to bring the struggle to a victorious end. The Bolsheviks were able to concentrate superior forces of the Red Army in decisive areas and thereby achieved victory.

The Bolsheviks also took advantage of the acute revolutionary crisis that gripped almost all the capitalist countries of Europe after the end of the First World War, and the contradictions between the leading powers of the Entente. “For three years, there were British, French, and Japanese armies on Russian territory. There is no doubt, wrote V.I. Lenin, that the most insignificant tension of the forces of these three powers would be quite enough to defeat us in a few months, if not a few weeks. And if we managed to hold off this attack, it was only due to the disintegration in the French troops that began to ferment among the British and Japanese. We took advantage of this difference in imperialist interests all the time.” The victory of the Red Army was facilitated by the revolutionary struggle of the international proletariat against armed intervention and the economic blockade of Soviet Russia, both within their own countries in the form of strikes and sabotage, and in the ranks of the Red Army, where tens of thousands of Hungarians, Czechs, Poles, Serbs, Chinese and others fought.

The Bolsheviks' recognition of the independence of the Baltic states excluded the possibility of their participation in the Entente intervention in 1919.

From the point of view of the Bolsheviks, their main enemy was the landowner-bourgeois counter-revolution, which, with the direct support of the Entente and the United States, took advantage of the fluctuations of the petty-bourgeois strata of the population, mainly peasants. The Bolsheviks recognized these fluctuations as extremely dangerous for themselves, since they gave the interventionists and White Guards the opportunity to create territorial bases of the counter-revolution and form mass armies. “In the final analysis, it was these fluctuations of the peasantry, as the main representative of the petty-bourgeois mass of working people, that decided the fate of Soviet power and the power of Kolchak-Denikin,” echoed the leaders of the white movement, the leader of the reds, V. I. Lenin.

Bolshevik ideology considered the historical significance of the Civil War to be that its practical lessons forced the peasantry to overcome their hesitations and led them to a military-political alliance with the working class. This, according to the Bolsheviks, strengthened the rear of the Soviet state and created the preconditions for the formation of a massive regular Red Army, which, being largely peasant in composition, became an instrument of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

In addition, the Bolsheviks used experienced military specialists of the old regime in the most responsible positions, who played a large role in the construction of the Red Army and its achievement of victories.

According to Bolshevik ideologists, the Red Army was greatly helped by the Bolshevik underground and partisan detachments operating behind white lines.

The most important condition for the victories of the Red Army, the Bolsheviks considered a single center for commanding military operations in the form of the Defense Council, as well as active political work carried out by the Revolutionary Military Councils of fronts, districts and armies and military commissars of units and units. During the most difficult periods, half of the entire composition of the Bolshevik Party was in the army, where personnel were sent after party, Komsomol and trade union mobilizations (“the district committee was closed, everyone went to the front”). The Bolsheviks carried out the same active activities in their rear, mobilizing efforts to restore industrial production, to procure food and fuel, and to organize transport.

White's point of view

Despite the extremely sad general condition of the Soviet troops, for the most part completely corrupted by the revolution of 1917, the Red command still had many advantages over us. It had a huge, multimillion-dollar human reserve, colossal technical and material resources that remained as an inheritance after the Great War. This circumstance allowed the Reds to send more and more units to capture the Donetsk basin. No matter how superior the white side was in both spirit and tactical preparation, it was still only a small handful of heroes, whose strength was diminishing every day. Having the Kuban as his base and the Don as a neighbor, that is, an area with a vibrant Cossack way of life, General Denikin was deprived of the opportunity to replenish his units with Cossack contingents to the extent of their actual need. Its mobilization capabilities were limited mainly to officer cadres and student youth. As for the working population, conscripting them into the army was undesirable for two reasons: firstly, due to their political sympathies, the miners were not clearly on the white side and therefore were an unreliable element. Second, mobilizing workers would immediately reduce coal production. The peasantry, seeing the small number of volunteer troops, avoided serving in the ranks and, apparently, waited. The districts southwest of Yuzovka were in Makhno's sphere of influence. Waging a daily struggle, our units suffered heavy losses in killed, wounded, sick and melted away every day. In such conditions of war, our command could only hold back the onslaught of the Reds through the valor of its troops and the skill of its commanders. As a rule, there were no reserves. They achieved success mainly by maneuver: they removed what they could from less attacked areas and transferred them to threatened areas. A company of 45-50 bayonets was considered strong, very strong! B. A. STEIFON.

Publicists and historians who sympathize with whites cite the following reasons for the defeat of the white cause:

1. The Reds controlled the densely populated central regions. There were more people in these territories than in the territories controlled by whites.
2. Regions that began to support whites (for example, Don and Kuban), as a rule, suffered more than others from the Red Terror.
3. Lack of talented speakers among whites. The superiority of Red propaganda over White propaganda (however, some emphasize that Kolchak and Denikin were defeated by troops consisting of people who actually heard only Red propaganda).
4. The inexperience of white leaders in politics and diplomacy. Many believe that this was the main reason for the lack of assistance from interventionists.
5. Conflicts between whites and national separatist governments over the slogan “One and Indivisible.” Therefore, whites repeatedly had to fight on two fronts.

Strategy and tactics of the Civil War

In the Civil War, the cart was used both for movement and for striking directly on the battlefield. Carts were especially popular among the Makhnovists. The latter used carts not only in battle, but also for transporting infantry. At the same time, the overall speed of the detachment corresponded to the speed of the trotting cavalry. Thus, Makhno’s troops easily covered up to 100 km a day for several days in a row. Thus, after a successful breakthrough near Peregonovka in September 1919, Makhno’s large forces covered more than 600 km from Uman to Gulyai-Polye in 11 days, taking the rear garrisons of the Whites by surprise. During the Civil War, in some operations, cavalry, both white and red, accounted for up to 50% of the infantry. The main method of action of cavalry units, units and formations was an attack on horseback (mounted attack), supported by powerful fire from machine guns from carts. When terrain conditions and stubborn enemy resistance limited the actions of cavalry in mounted formation, it fought in dismounted battle formations. During the Civil War, the military command of the opposing sides was able to successfully resolve the issues of using large masses of cavalry to carry out operational tasks. The creation of the world's first mobile units - cavalry armies - was an outstanding achievement of military art. Cavalry armies were the main means of strategic maneuver and development of success; they were used en masse in decisive directions against those enemy forces that at this stage posed the greatest danger.

The success of cavalry combat operations during the Civil War was facilitated by the vastness of the theaters of military operations, the extension of enemy armies on wide fronts, and the presence of gaps that were poorly covered or not occupied by troops at all, which were used by cavalry formations to reach the enemy’s flanks and carry out deep raids in his rear. Under these conditions, the cavalry could fully realize its combat properties and capabilities - mobility, surprise attacks, speed and decisiveness of action.

Armored trains were widely used during the Civil War. This was caused by its specifics, such as the virtual absence of clear front lines, and the intense struggle for railways, as the main means for the rapid transfer of troops, ammunition, and grain.

Some armored trains were inherited by the Red Army from the Tsarist army, while mass production of new ones was launched. In addition, until 1919, mass production of “surrogate” armored trains continued, assembled from scrap materials from ordinary passenger cars in the absence of any drawings; such an “armored train” could be assembled literally in a day.

Consequences of the Civil War

By 1921, Russia was literally in ruins. The territories of Poland, Finland, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Western Ukraine, Belarus, Kars region (in Armenia) and Bessarabia were ceded from the former Russian Empire. According to experts, the population in the remaining territories barely reached 135 million people. Losses in these territories as a result of wars, epidemics, emigration, and declining birth rates have amounted to at least 25 million people since 1914.

During the hostilities, the Donbass, the Baku oil region, the Urals and Siberia were especially damaged; many mines and mines were destroyed. Factories shut down due to a lack of fuel and raw materials. Workers were forced to leave the cities and go to the countryside. In general, the level of industry decreased by 5 times. The equipment has not been updated for a long time. Metallurgy produced as much metal as it was smelted under Peter I.

Agricultural production fell by 40%. Almost the entire imperial intelligentsia was destroyed. Those who remained urgently emigrated to avoid this fate. During the Civil War, from hunger, disease, terror and battles, from 8 to 13 million people died (according to various sources), including about 1 million Red Army soldiers. Up to 2 million people emigrated from the country. The number of street children increased sharply after World War I and the Civil War. According to some data, in 1921 there were 4.5 million street children in Russia, according to others, in 1922 there were 7 million street children. The damage to the national economy amounted to about 50 billion gold rubles, industrial production fell to 4-20% of the 1913 level.

Losses during the war (table)

Memory

On November 6, 1997, President of the Russian Federation B. Yeltsin signed the Decree “On the construction of a monument to Russians who died during the Civil War,” according to which it is planned to erect a monument in Moscow to Russians who died during the Civil War. The Government of the Russian Federation, together with the Government of Moscow, has been instructed to determine the location for the construction of the monument.

In works of art

Movies

• Death Bay(Abram Room, 1926)
• Arsenal(Alexander Dovzhenko, 1928)
• Descendant of Genghis Khan(Vsevolod Pudovkin, 1928)
• Chapaev(Georgy Vasiliev, Sergei Vasiliev, 1934)
• Thirteen(Mikhail Romm, 1936)
• We are from Kronstadt(Efim Dzigan, 1936)
• Knight without armor(Jacques Feyder, 1937)
• Baltic people(Alexander Faintzimmer, 1938)
• Year nineteen(Ilya Trauberg, 1938)
• Shchors(Alexander Dovzhenko, 1939)
• Alexander Parkhomenko(Leonid Lukov, 1942)
• Pavel Korchagin(Alexander Alov, Vladimir Naumov, 1956)
• Wind(Alexander Alov, Vladimir Naumov, 1958)
• Elusive Avengers(Edmond Keosayan, 1966)
• New adventures of the elusive(Edmond Keosayan, 1967)
• His Excellency's Aide-de-Camp(Evgeny Tashkov, 1969)

In fiction

• Babel I. "Cavalry" (1926)
• Baryakina E.V. "The Argentine" (2011)
• Bulgakov. M. "White Guard" (1924)
• Ostrovsky N. “How the steel was tempered” (1934)
• Serafimovich A. "Iron Stream" (1924)
• Tolstoy A. “The Adventures of Nevzorov, or Ibicus” (1924)
• Tolstoy A. “Walking through torment” (1922 - 1941)
• Fadeev A. "Destruction" (1927)
• Furmanov D. "Chapaev" (1923)

In painting

The following works are dedicated to the Civil War in Russia: Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin “1918 in Petrograd” (1920), “Death of a Commissar” (1928), Isaac Brodsky “Execution of 26 Baku Commissars” (1925), Alexander Deineka “Defense of Petrograd” (1928 ), “Mercenary of the Interventionists” (1931), Fyodor Bogorodsky “Brother” (1932), Kukryniksy “Morning of an Officer of the Tsarist Army” (1938).

Theater

• 1925 - “Storm” by Vladimir Bill-Belotserkovsky (MGSPS Theatre).