Russian Civil War; 1918-1920

The Russian Revolution1815-1924

Civil War; 1918-1921

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

• Introduction: Wartime Origins--The Czech Legion

• War Communism

• The War against the Village

• Red Terror

• The Civil War

• The New Empire


The Czech Legion


The Czech Legion


Origins of the Czecho-Slovak Legion

•1914-1917--the Russian army had captured some 50,000 to 60,000 Czech and Slovak prisoners serving in the Austrian army

•most were anti-German, anti-Hungarian, and socialist in sentiment

• June, 1917--the Provisional Government formed some of them into national units which fought in the Kerensky offensive

•after Brest-Litovsk they wanted to leave Russia quickly to avoid being punished by the Germans or Austrians as deserters and traitors!

•March, 1918--Moscow agreed and formed them into the Czechoslovak Legion. They moved by rail eastward towards Vladivostok, bound for France and service against the Central Powers

•Thomas Masaryk arranged with the Bolsheviks that they might travel armed to defend themselves from bandits


Thomas Masaryk (black hat) and members of the Czechoslovak National Council with Czech Legion soldiers


Trouble between the Legion and the Reds

• 14 May 1918--all went quite smoothly until a fight broke out in the Cheliabinsk railway station wherein several Czechs killed a Hungarian POW

• the local soviet arrested some of the Czechs, only to have their comrades seize the local arsenal and demand their release

•when the locals complied, Trotsky, recently made Commissar of War, overreacted, demanded the Legion disarm and discontinue the evacuation.

• their choice: join the Red army, labor battalions, or be interned in concentration camps

• this tactless move turned sympathetic armed men into implacable enemies

•between May and June the Czech Legion seized major cities along the railway and presented Moscow with its first serious military challenge


The Czechs gain control

Omsk7 June

Chelyabinsk26 May Tomsk

31 MaySamara8 June

Vladivostok29 June


Political Implications of the Czech Threat

•the westernmost area occupied by the Czechs, the provinces along the mid-Volga, was a stronghold of the Socialists-Revolutionaries

•as soon as the Czechs had expelled the Bolsheviks, the SRs emerged into the open and formed in Samara a committee of the Constituent Assembly, popularly known as Komuch, made up of SR deputies to the dissolved Assembly

•declaring themselves the sole legitimate government of Russia, Komuch claimed authority over all the area liberated by the Legion

•they restored civil liberties but maintained the Bolshevik Land Decree, in as much as Lenin had copied it from the SR program

•a similar government authority claimed sovereignty east of the Urals


Reaction of the Entente/Allies

• early 1918-although some, notably Churchill, urged “strangling Bolshevism in its cradle,” most Western politicians were focused on the life and death struggle with the Central Powers

• March, 1918-concern that the Germans might seize the arms stockpiled at Murmansk and Archangel led to the first landings of British, followed by French, Serb and American troops

• May, 1918-the success of the small Czech force electrified anti-Bolshevik sentiment in the West

• the French ordered them to abandon their plan to leave Russia and to complete the task of gaining control of the Trans-Siberian Railroad

• 2 July-the Allied Supreme War Council adopted the plan of armed intervention


The Allies Divide as to Goals

•Wilson was clearest in limiting the role of the American Expeditionary Force. The 7,000 men under General Graves had strict orders to merely protect the arms depots and avoid involvement in Russian political affairs

•at the other extreme, the 72,000 Japanese soldiers landed at Vladivostok were clearly hoping to “fish in troubled waters” and detach the Russian maritime provinces if at all possible

•Britain was the most supportive of the White forces throughout the Civil War, especially when Churchill became War Minister

•France vacillated, now hot, now cold, in supporting the southern Volunteer Army


Birth of the Red Army•ex-tsarist generals as well as French advisers had long urged the

Bolsheviks to give up their idea of a worker militia and use conscription

•29 May 1918--one week after the Czechs had defied Trotsky’s order and rebelled--Moscow announced a general mobilization of workers and miners

•two months later--all male citizens between 18 and 40 were declared liable for military service

•all officers of the old army aged 26 to 31 were ordered to register

•the main innovation of the reborn army was the institution of political “commissars”

•29 July--Trotsky promised that any officer who contemplated betraying Soviet Russia would be shot out of hand. All that would remain would be a “wet spot”


War Communism


War Communism

EITHER THE DEATH OF CAPITAL OR DEATH UNDER THE FOOT OF CAPITAL

LONG LIVE WORKER-

PEASANT, SOVIET POWER!

ALL POWER TO CAPITALISTS!

DEATH TO WORKERSAND PEASANTS!

poster from 1920


[Lenin’s]...belief, shared by all socialists, ... the capitalist system, driven as it is by private profit, is not only unjust but irrational and hence inherently unproductive. Socialism, by allocating human and material resources in a rational manner, with regard to their maximal utility, should be able to attain unprecedented levels of efficiency.

Pipes, p.192


Therefore, Communism Now!

•Trotsky’s recollection, shortly after Lenin's death in 1924:

• on taking power Lenin wrote: “The triumph of socialism in Russia [required] a certain interval of time, no less than a few months.” …

• ...at Smolnyi, at meetings of the Council of People’s Commissars [Sovnarkom, JBP] Lenin invariably repeated that we shall have socialism in half a year and become the mightiest state

•this was the reasoning behind the the economic policies known as “War Communism” between 1918 and 1921

•only after their failure and the near economic collapse did Lenin forge the name and the myth that the necessities of war forced him to the draconian measures of forcible confiscation of private property

•this, more than anything else, fueled the anti-Bolshevik armed reaction known as the civil war


War Communism, which reached its apogee [high point] in the winter of 1920-21,when the Civil War was over, involved a number of sweeping measures designed to place the entire economy of Russia-- her labor force as well as her productive capacity and distribution network--under the exclusive management of the state, or more precisely, the Communist Party. The process of expropriation began with real estate. • The Land Decree of October 26, 1917, deprived non-peasants of their landed property. A decree nationalizing urban real estate followed. • In January, 1918, the Communist government repudiated all state debts, domestic as well as foreign. • A decree of May 1918 abolished inheritance, and another issued the following month, nationalized industry. These measures did away with private ownership of capital and other productive assets; they implemented the dictum of Marx and Engels that the quintessence of communism was the abolition of private property.

Pipes, p. 193


The specific provisions of War Communism fall under five headings:

1. the nationalization of the means of production and transport;

2. the liquidation of private commerce through the nationalization of retail and wholesale trade, and its replacement by a government- controlled distribution system;

3. the abolition of money as a unit of exchange and accounting in favor of state-regulated barter;

4. the imposition on the entire economy of a single plan;

5. the introduction of compulsory labor for all able-bodied male adults, and, on occasion, also women and children.


The theorists and architects of War Communism had only a nodding acquaintance with the discipline of economics and none whatever with business management. Their knowledge of the subject derived exclusively from the reading of socialist literature. Not one of them had run an enterprise or earned a ruble from manufacture or trade…. That such rank amateurs would undertake to turn upside down the economy of tens of millions, subjecting it to innovations never attempted anywhere even on a small scale, says something of the judgement of the people who in October, 1917 seized power in Russia.

Pipes, p.194


the abolition of money• October, 1917-paper money circulating = 19.6 billion

rubles.Most were the imperials (left) called Nikolaevki, convertible to gold on demand

• also some were issued by the Provisional Government, called Kerenki, non-convertible

• after taking over the State Bank the Reds continued to print Kerenkis

• since the tax system had broken down completely, they financed government by ‘running the printing presses” with the inevitable inflationary results

• early 1919-prices were 15 times those of 1917

• by 1921- paper in circulation=16 trillion rubles. Paper money became virtually worthless, hyperinflation

• by 1922 the experiment ended and a gold-based ruble was introduced

An imperial 5 ruble noteA Nikolaevka


PlanningSupreme Council of the National Economy--December, 1917

• subordinated to the Sovnarkom, it was to enjoy the same monopoly in regard to the country’s economy that the Party enjoyed in the realm of politics

• its authority tended to be largely fictitious:

• agriculture, the nation’s largest source of wealth, continued to be managed by the peasant-cultivators, not the state

• the traditional black market dominated distribution

• only industry came under the Supreme Economic Council with the predictable bureaucratic-induced disastrous results

• 1920-even Pravda admitted “there is no economic plan”

•“...the utopian programs which Lenin introduced had all but destroyed Russian industry and reduced by one half Russia’s industrial labor force.”--Pipes, p. 199


The Liquidation of the Market

•“To Marxists the market is the heart of the capitalist economy, as money is its lifeblood”--Pipes

•the agency to control distribution of commodities was called Komprod

•citizens received ration cards according to their “value” to society. Needless to say the “bourgeoisie” received one quarter of a worker’s ration

•predictably, a huge black market, i.e., free market, developed along with shortages

•by the winter of 1919-20 “the foodstuffs consumed in Russian cities...as measured by their caloric value...between 66 and 80 %” was furnished by the free market

•so much for their bold attempt to abolish the laws of supply and demand


Centralized Control of the Proletariat

• labor too must be regimented. “The only way to attract the labor force required for economic tasks is to introduce compulsory labor service” --Trotsky

• for the bourgeoisie this spelled servitude in work battalions doing disagreeable or dangerous tasks with execution as punishment for shirking

•proletarians were sent, like soldiers, wherever they were needed without regard for their personal preferences

• free trade unions were abolished as unnecessary:

• “since Soviet Russia was a ‘worker’s state,’ the worker could have no interests distinct from those of the state; in obeying the state, he obeyed, in effect, himself, even if he happened to think otherwise.” Pipes, 202

• instead of raising productivity to unprecedented heights, War Communism had reduced it to levels that threatened Russia’s very survival

•the remedy was to collectivize agricultureWednesday, October 21, 2009

The War against the Village


The War against the Village

PEASANT! THE RED ARMY,WILLPRESERVE YOUR HARVEST FROM PESTS.


Perhaps the greatest paradox of the October coup d’état was that it sought to introduce a “dictatorship of the proletariat” in a country in which industrial workers (including self-employed artisans) constituted at most 2 percent of those gainfully employed, while 75 to 80 percent of the population consisted of peasants. And, as we have noted, peasants, in the judgment of Marxists, were a “petty bourgeois” class, inimical to the “proletariat.” This fact and this perception ensured that the Communists would have to govern not by consent but by coercion.

Pipes, p. 203


Grain Prices

• price increases began during the 1914-18 war and accelerated after the February Revolution

• this led peasants to keep grain off the market hoping for further increases

• the Reds required all surplus grain to be turned over to them at fixed prices

• August, 1918-official price, 1 ruble/kg of grain vs free (black) market:

• Moscow = 18 rubles

• Skt-Peterburg =26 rubles


Class Warfare--Classic Example• “If we can say that revolutionary Soviet authority

is sufficiently strong in the cities...the same cannot be said in regard to the village…

• For that reason we we must most seriously confront the question of creating in the village two contrasting and hostile forces…

• Only if we succeed in splitting the village into two irreconcilably hostile camps, if we are able to inflame there the same civil war that had taken place not so long ago in the cities…

• only then will we be in a position to say that we will do to the village that we are able to do for the city Iakov Sverdlov

•

in the Ispolkom May, 1918


Demonization of the Kulaksphoto from the Stalin era


...the Bolsheviks had made up their minds to gain control of the countryside by inciting one part of the rural population against the other, unleashing a civil war among citizens living peaceably side by side. The assault troops were to consist of urban workers [the “food battalions”] as well as poor and landless peasants; the “enemy” was the “kulaks,” the rural “bourgeoisie.” Lenin hated whomever he perceived as the “bourgeoisie” with a destructive passion that fully equalled Hitler’s hatred of the Jews; nothing short of their total annihilation would satisfy him. The trouble was...no standards existed by which to define a “kulak.” The difficulty...became apparent in the summer of 1918, when commissars in charge of inciting poor peasants against their richer neighbors reported that...40 percent if not a majority of peasants were kulaks.

Pipes, p.107


(1) to destroy the politically active peasants, almost to a man followers of the SRs, by designating them as kulaks

(2) to create a network of rural soviets, run by communists

(3) to extract the maximum of food for the cities and the armed forces

The agrarian decrees which the Bolsheviks issued in May and June 1918 had a threefold purpose:

Eventually 75,000 soldiers joined 50,000 armed civilians in combating the nation’s food producers....The historian Vladimir Brovkin estimates that the “magnitude of the Bolshevik war with the peasants on the internal front eclipsed by far the frontline civil war against the [anti-Bolshevik] Whites.”

Pipes, p. 208


A “food detachment” about to depart for the village


•the quantities of food extracted (after the collectors took their share) were small

•the effort to split the village proved unavailing. When confronted with an outside force, the peasants closed ranks. “Poor peasants” generally refused to denounce their “kulak” neighbors

•1918-1919-although tens of thousands of rural soviets came into existence, they were headed, not by Communists, but by the headmen of the former mirs who were, by and large, SRs

•the village stubbornly clung to its own ways

•the grain output equalled only 60 % of its pre-war figure

•it required only a spell of bad weather for famine to stalk the country

Failure


A typical street scene under War Communism


Red Terror


Red Terror

Dzerzhinsky as the Sword of Revolution cartoon by Nikolai Bukharin, 1925


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Bukharin

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Bukharin

Preparations for Regicide• March-July, 1917--after abdication, the Imperial family stayed at Tsarskoe Selo

under house arrest

• July, 1917--fearing a German assault on Petrograd, Kerensky decided to move them away from the capital. He feared they would be a rallying point for a would-be restoration

• July, 1917-March, 1918--the place he chose was Tobolsk, in western Siberia. There they lived in relative comfort in the former governor’s palace

• at first the Bolsheviks ignored the royal family. But after Brest-Litovsk when resentment began to rise, Lenin decided to tighten security on all the “Royals.”

• April-July, 1918--the imperial family were housed under a Cheka guard in the Ipatiev home in Ekaterinburg

• 12-13 June--a “trial balloon” in nearby Perm, the murder of Archduke Michael, next in line to the throne. This was a test of foreign reaction. “The fact that neither the foreign governments nor the foreign press displayed much concern probably sealed the fate of the Romanovs.”


The Murder of the RomanovsJuly 17, 1918












Lenin’s Close Call, 30 August 1918

•after a rare public speech at a Moscow factory, he was on his way to his car

• three shots rang out, one almost fatal

•under examination, Kaplan said she wanted to punish him for dispersing the Constituent Assembly and for Brest-Litovsk

• this led to the policy of “Red Terror”


The decree of September 4 ordered an immediate stop to the policy of “slackness and mollycoddling” of the regime’s enemies:

All Right SRs known to local soviets must be immediately arrested. It is necessary to take from among the bourgeoisie and officers numerous hostages. In the event of the least attempts at resistance or the least stir in White Guard circles, resort must be had at once to mass executions….Not the slightest hesitation, nor the slightest indecisiveness, in the application of mass terror.

The decree of September 5 ordered “class enemies” to be committed to concentration camps and all persons linked to “White Guard organizations, conspiracies, and seditious actions” to be summarily executed.

Pipes, p. 223


Concentration Camps

•origins:

• 1896-“Butcher Weyler” in Cuba

• 1901-the British in South Africa

• 1914-1918-POW camps

•end of 1920 -- 84 camps that held approximately 50,000 prisoners

•three years later -- 315 camps with 70,000 prisoners

•13 March 1921-Adolf Hitler in the Völkischer Beobachter: “One prevents the Jewish corruption of our people, if necessary, by confining its instigators to concentration camps.”


Tambov Rebellion, 1920-1921

• one of the largest and best organized peasant rebellions during the Civil War

• it occurred 300 miles southeast of Moscow in the Tambov Oblast

• it was a reaction to the grain confiscations of the Food Battlions

• Chemical weapons were used "from end of June 1921 until apparently the fall of 1921", by direct order from leadership of Red Army and Communist party. Publications in local Communist newspapers openly glorified liquidations of "bandits" with the poison gas

• seven Concentration camps were set up. At least 50,000 people were interned, mostly women, children, and elderly, some of them were sent there as hostages. The mortality rate in the camps was 15-20 percent a month.

• The uprising was gradually quelled in 1921. Antonov was killed in 1922 during an attempt to arrest him. Total losses among the population of Tambov region in 1920-1922 resulting from the war, executions, and imprisonment in concentration camps were estimated as at least 240,000


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_weapons

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_weapons

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1921


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolshevik

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolshevik

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentration_camp

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentration_camp

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostage

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostage

The Kronstadt Rebellion, March, 1921

• one of a series of left wing revolts against the Reds during this time caused by war, famine, disease and the Red Terror

• February, 1921-a group of sailors, soldiers and civilians at the Kronstadt naval base reached the breaking point

• 1 March-a meeting adopted the 15 demands of the Petropavlovsk memorandum

• 2 March-the Reds responded with an ultimatum and alleged that French counterintelligence was behind the revolt

• 7-17 March-after an embarrassing start the Reds’ numbers prevailed

• historians estimate that 1,200 to 2,168 were executed in the days following the revolt

All Hail the Avanguard of theRevolution The Red Fleet

1920 poster



The Red Army attacks across the frozen Finnish Gulf


Louis Fischer’s concept of “Kronstadt”

The 1949 book The God That Failed contains Louis Fischer's definition of "Kronstadt" as the moment in which communists or fellow-travelers decide not just to leave the Communist Party but to oppose it as anti-communists. Editor Richard Crossman said in the book's introduction: "The Kronstadt rebels called for Soviet power free from Bolshevik dominance" (p. x). After describing the actual Kronstadt rebellion, Fischer spent many pages applying the concept it to some to subsequent former-communists -- including himself: "What counts decisively is the 'Kronstadt.' Until its advent, one may waver emotionally or doubt intellectually or even reject the cause altogether in one's mind and yet refuse to attack it. I had no 'Kronstadt' for many years" (p. 204). Writers who subsequently picked up the term have included Whittaker Chambers, Clark Kerr, David Edgar, William F. Buckley, Jr., and Norman Podhoretz.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_God_That_Failed

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_God_That_Failed

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Fischer

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Fischer

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fellow-traveler

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fellow-traveler

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-communism




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Crossman

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Crossman

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whittaker_Chambers

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whittaker_Chambers

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clark_Kerr

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clark_Kerr

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Edgar_(playwright)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Edgar_(playwright)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_F._Buckley,_Jr.




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Podhoretz

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Podhoretz

The Civil War


The Civil War

For the unityof Russia!

Whites foughtunder the Imperialcolors, white, blue,

red; but withoutthe Romanov

double-headedeagle

Za Ye•DEEN•oo•u Ra•SSEE•oo


The Civil War

Mount up, workersand peasants!

The Red cavalry--guarantee of victory!




In its treatment of the Civil War, much as in the case of War Communism and the Red Terror, the Soviet government and the historians in its employ insisted on depicting it as something forced on the new regime by its enemies. But the historical record indicates the contrary to be true--namely that in this case, too, the Bolsheviks acted rather than reacted; they wanted a Civil War and did everything in their power to promote it. Lenin...took power to unleash such a war. For him the October coup d’état would have been a futile adventure if its only result were a change of regimes in Russia….From the instant World War I broke out he denounced pacifist socialists, who demanded an end to the fighting. True revolutionaries did not want peace: “This is a slogan of philistines and priests. The proletarian slogan must be: civil war.” Trotsky stated this even more bluntly: “Soviet authority is organized civil war.”

Pipes, p. 233


A SimplifiedMap of theCivil War“Fronts”


Reds’ Strategic Advantages• Unity of Command

•Central Position

• Interior Lines

• Control of many of the arms factories and stores of weapons

• Superior Numbers

•Three Solid Military SupportersWednesday, October 21, 2009

The Bolsheviks’ Praetorian Guards

• two elite units and one group of intensely loyal amateurs made up the solid early military supporters

• the sailors, NCOs, and even some officers of the Kronstadt fleet were early converts to Bolshevism

• likewise the elite Latvian Rifle Regiment of the Imperial army

• 1918-Vatsetis and his soldiers put down rebellions against the Reds in Moscow and Yaroslavl

• 1919-he became the first commander of the Red Army

• the Latvian Rifles fought against the Volunteer Army of Yudenich and Wrangel

Jukums Vatceitis (Lat.)Joachim Vatsetis (Russ.)

Commander of the Latvian Rifles(1873-1938)


War Commissar Trotsky reviews the Latvian Rifles, 1918Commander Vatseitis is second on his left


Trotsky as War Minister, 1918Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Revvoensovet (Military Revolutionary Council)

• Trotsky as depicted by his biographer, Isaac Deutscher, is the man who “had founded a great army and guided it to victory”

• “In fact, his contribution was more modest”--Pipes

• the decision to create a peasant army staffed by ex- tsarist officers was made by the Central Committee, not by Trotsky

• credit for the Red Army’s victory belongs to these some 75,000 ex-tsarist officers

• “Trotsky had no prior military experience and his strategic sense left a great deal to be desired”--Pipes

• “He was a spellbinding speaker...like Kerensky, he could be called ’Persuader in Chief ’ “ Trotsky as Commissar of War

chaired the Revvoensovet


Peace and Freedom in Sovietland

White poster1919

The “Star of David” is actually 5 pointed,

making it Satanic


D. Moor’s famous poster


Defeating “in detail”

•although the Reds had to face all three fronts at the same time, we will consider each front separately, from start to finish. Keep in mind that Lenin and Trotsky didn’t have that luxury!

•Kolchak--the Eastern Front. The first perceived threat, begun by the Czech Legion, but organized and continued with Entente help under Supreme Ruler, Admiral Kolchak

•The Volunteer Army--the Southern Front. Actually the first to organize and the last major group to surrender. Led by four generals.

•Yudenich--the Northwestern Front. The last major threat.

•the other “players”--some “Red,” some “White,” several opportunistically switching sides. “Blacks,” “Greens,” Poles, muslim peoples of Central Asia, guerrilla bands


Atrocities and Terror on Every Side












The Eastern FrontMay, 1918-February, 1920

Aleksandr Kolchak,polar explorer,

Admiral, Imperial Navy,Supreme Ruler of the

Provisional All-Russian Government

1874-1920


Allied missions pressure the Siberian Whites

•Spring, 1918-after the Legion’s successes in the mid-Volga, a Siberian government of SRs and Kadets claimed sovereignty there

•the Allies pushed to have Komuch in Samara and the Siberian government in Omsk merge

•Komuch was much the more radical of the two, keeping in force much of the Red social legislation, such as land to the peasants. It also promised to reconvene the Constituent Assembly

•September, 1918-the pressure produced a five-man Directory. It spent its two-month life in intrigues, Komuch vs the Siberians”...an air of unreality…” -Pipes

•night of 17-18 November--a coup arrested the Directory and installed Kolchak, the Directory’s Minister of War, as military dictator


Different views of the Supreme Ruler








still from October, 2008 Russian biopic “Admiral”


Of all the Allies only the British gave significant material support to the Whites. Here the Czechs train with Lewis guns


The End of the LegionThe Beginning of the End for Kolchak

• 18 October 1918-the Czechoslovak National Council in Paris proclaimed that nation’s independence.

• As soon as word reached the Legion, the Czechs and Slovaks in Russia withdrew from the fighting, leaving the defense of the mid-Volga and Siberia to the very inferior Russian People’s Army.

• At French urging, the remnant of the Legion agreed to guard a segment of the Trans-Siberian Railway


1919-Success, then Failure

•Kolchak, personally admirable, was uniquely unqualified for the job

•Spring, 1919-the offensive made initial gains. Trotsky had few troops there fearing the southern front more, anticipating massive Allied landings on the Black Sea coast

• June,1919-shifting troops quickly, the Reds gained numerical superiority and this, coupled with Kolchak’s administrative incompetence, spelled reversals

•the White Army’s retreat turned into a rout and local Bolshevik guerrilla groups finished the job

•7 February 1920-Kolchak, personally betrayed, was executed by a firing squad. Britain lost heart and looked for ways to get out of the intervention. Too many burdens: Ireland, Iraq, India, Labour (“Hands Off Soviet Russia!” Glasgow strike) Churchill isolated, was defeated



Kolchak Post Mortem• devoid of political ambitions and interest, he

had accepted the position with a heavy heart, as a patriotic duty

• as a naval officer, he knew nothing of land warfare

• he disliked politics and politicians

• he felt ill at ease in the company of others and suffered from bouts of depression

• he proved a total disaster as an administrator

• a bloated staff of 2,000 officers headquartered in Omsk planned operations for an army of 140,000 troops

• supplies were regularly pilferedlast picture taken pre mortem (before his execution)


The Southern FrontOctober, 1917-November, 1920

Generals Alekseev, Kornilov, Denikin, and Wrangel

poster for the Volunteer Army1919


Founder of the First White Force

• Russian patriot, from a military family, decorated in the Russo-Japanese War

• Aug, 1915-Mar, 1917-becomes Chief of Staff under Tsar Nicholas when he takes command of the army

• Feb, 1917-urges the tsar to abdicate

• advised the Provisional Government, opposed the soviets, was involved in the Kornilov affair

• Oct, 1917-fled and formed Alekseev’s Officer Organization, the basis of the Volunteer Army

• Dec, 1917-Kornilov becomes military commander while Alekseev deals with political and financial affairs

General Mikhail Vasiliyevich Alekseev1857-25 September 1918


From poverty to high command

• born in Russian Poland, his serf father was sent to 25 years military service, became an officer in his 22nd year, retired a major in 1869

• Anton, the only son, was raised as a Russian patriot of Orthodox faith. He followed his father into the army in 1890

• became a colonel in the Russo-Japanese War

• distinguished himself in the Brusilov offensive, was Kornilov’s chief of staff

• followed him to Novocherkassk and the Volunteer Army

• April, 1918-Kornilov was KIA and command of the army passed to Denikin

Anton Ivanovich Denikin1872-1947


Tsaritsyn; A Missed Opportunity• spring, 1918-Alekseev wants to join the Don

Cossacks in attacking Tsaritsin. Its capture would have allowed a link-up with the Czech Legion

• Denikin chose instead to march southward into the Kuban Steppe, eliminating Reds in his rear and recruiting more Kuban Cossack cavalry

• Nov & Dec, 1918-The Don Cossacks attack, unsupported, but fail to take Tsaritsyn

• the beginning of the feud between Stalin and Trotsky. Stalin, on food collection, gets himself appointed to the MilRevKom, Southern Front. He interferes with local commanders and promotes terror against ex-tsarist officers. Trotsky demands his recall

• Stalin later claims credit for the successful defense of Tsaritsyn and has the city renamed Stalingrad

Stalin at Tsaritsyn/Stalingrad/Volgograd1918


A White Infantry Division, 1919Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Main Fronts of the Civil War


Critical BattlesOctober-November, 1919

•Spring, 1919-Wrangel, Denikin’s best general, captures Tsaritsyn; but too late to link up with Kolchak, already falling back

•almost all of the Ukraine comes under control of the Whites

• the Fall Offensives (right) first threaten Moscow, then collapse under counter-attacks

• the Reds are aided by Makhno’s Black Ukrainians behind Denikin’s lines


Lenin -- the Darkest Hour

•Fall, 1919--things looked grim for the Reds

•Western intelligence predicted that the Whites might soon capture both Moscow and Petrograd

• following the maxim, “you’re not beaten until you stop fighting,” the Bolsheviks kept up their defense

• later they betrayed their Ukrainian ally, Makhno, whose aid had been crucial in defeating the Volunteer Armypicture March, 1919

recovered from the assassination attempt but showing signs of stress


Dashing Red Cavalry Commander

• although born in the Don Cossack heartland, he was from a farming family, an inogorodnyetz, worked as a farm laborer

• 1903-drafted, became a cavalryman, fought as a non-commissioned officer, four times decorated with the St. George’s Cross

• 1917-after the October Revolution he became radicalized, organized what became the First Cavalry Army

• 1919-key in stopping Denikin’s drive to Moscow

• 1920-took part, with less success, in the Polish- Soviet War

• emerged as one of the Soviet heroes of the Civil WarSemyon Mikhailovich Budyonny

1883-1973


First Cavalry Army Monumentin the Ukraine, Lviv Oblast


Cavalry units were vital to both sides

•one of the peasants’ complaints, which fed the Green rebellion, was the requisition (stealing) of their work horses as both cavalry mounts and draft animals

•although both sides used armored cars, trucks and even tanks; these were distinctly in the minority

•mobile firepower was supplied by the innovation of carriage-mounted machine guns called tachankas

STRUGGLE OF THE RED KNIGHTWITH THE DARK FORCES


Tachankas (тачанки)














Russian Civil War Armored Cars











Zhorki (“Vigilant”) Smelyi (“Brave”) Moguchi (“Mighty”)








British Tanks given to the Whites








Whenever tanks appeared they dominated the battlefield, seizing strong points and overrunning panicked enemy forces. Only a concentration of Red artillery or Garford gun cars could drive them away. Conversely, the arrival of tanks had an almost magical effect on the Whites. White generals on all fronts consistently requested these from the Allies above all other logistical considerations. British Royal Tank Corps personnel witnessed mounted Kuban Cossacks kissing the sides of tanks in gratitude.

The primary problem with the tanks, however, was simply that there were not enough of them. Even more importantly, there were never enough fully trained crew, especially on the southern front where the greatest employment of tanks took place.

D. Bullock & A. Deryabin, Armored Units of the Russian Civil War, p. 13


White Armored Trains








Railways were central to the planning of most military operations during the Civil War period and armored trains were vital for controlling the rails and seizing stations and railheads. Armored trains provided direct and indirect offensive and defensive fire and could easily be switched from one sector to another. Control of a line enabled friendly tanks, armored cars and troop trains to move up in echelon and debouch at the front while, conversely, denying this ability to the enemy. If a sector were lightly garrisoned by defensive artillery, armored trains could force the position and linger in the rear of the enemy, allowing friendly forces to consolidate the field.

Bullock & Deryabin, p. 23


Primary Rail Lines1918-1920


The White’s Best General• born in Lithuania to a German family with a long tradition of

Russian military service

• serves as an officer in both the Russo-Japanese and First World Wars

• early volunteer to the southern Volunteer Army

• June, 1919-captures Tsaritsyn. Honest and able administrator, does not tolerate lawlessness or looting by his troops

• December, 1919- commander, Volunteer Army

• 4 April 1920-elected commander, White forces in the Crimea

• 14 November 1920-last White civil and military personnel leave for exile with him

• 1928-an émigré in Brussels, he is poisoned by a Soviet agent

Pyotr Nikolaevich Wrangel1878-1928


White Army,Black Baron.

Preparing anewfor us the tsar’s

throne!But from the taiga to the British sea

the Red Armyis strongest!












WRANGEL STILL LIVES!

STRIKE HIM RELENTLESSLY!





So let the RedsGrip with powerTheir bayonets with their callous hand,And all of us haveIrrepressiblyto go into the last mortal battle!



The Northwestern Front

July, 1919-1920

The last and most brief, though serious, threat to the

Reds. British support was critical and when it ended, so

did the front

General Yudenich, seated,with staff officers


Baltikum

In 1242 Aleksandr Nevsky stopped the Teutonic Knights in the Battle on the Ice. But they were never expelled from Livonia (Latin) or Baltikum (the Baltics, German) They became the land-owning upper class over a Slavic peasantry of Lithuanians, Letts (peoples of Latvia) and non-Slav Estonians.Above is one of the Teutonic Order’s castles, Marienburg, built from 1270-1300. It is the largest brick complex in Europe!


The Struggle for Baltikum• early 18th c.--Peter the Great adds these

lands to Russia in the Great Northern War

• his interest in Western technology leads him to respect “the German Liberties” here and throughout the empire

• so the class structure remains down to the early 20th c.

• 2 Sept 1917-von der Golz’s army captures Riga

• 11 Nov 1918-unwilling to let the Reds crush the Baltics, the Allies authorize the German Army in Baltikum to remain under arms and support the newly formed White Army of General Yudenich

• they are joined by Freikorps volunteers

Map of Livonia, 1573


Freikorps• Dec, 1918-Jan, 1919--the movement began in

Germany, resisting the Red sailors and Spartacist uprisings

• the volunteer units, called Freikorps, were composed of ex-soldiers and youth who had “missed their war”

• 1919-As Poland began to establish itself as a reborn nation, German nationalists resisted surrendering Poznania/Wartheland

• Sturmabteilung Rossbach was formed as part of this volunteer Grenzschutz Ost

• summer, 1919-as the German Army in Baltikum began to support the Whites’ Northwest front, many Freikorps units moved east to join that fight against the Reds Lt Rossbach, Freiwillige

Sturmabteilung Rossbach,late 1919


The Northwestern “Government”July, 1919-1920

• after the armistice, British warships could enter the Baltic and support the Whites there

• July, 1919-Yudenich left France to command the White forces in Estonia

• he began negotiations with his friend Mannerheim to bring Finland into a joint attack on Petrograd

• they failed because Kolchak refused to recognize Finnish independence

• 19 October--attacking alone, he reaches the outskirts of Petrograd

• 1 November--Yudenich begins his retreatGeneral Nikolai Nikolaievich Yudenich1862-1933


Red counterattack, end of OctoberWhite frontlineWhite positions, 21-22 OctoberBritish NavyRed NavyEstonian Peipus FlotillaBritish and White tanks

KEY (enlarged)


Rally to the defense of Petrograd!


Trotsky and the defense of Petrograd








The Other “Fronts”

as described earlier, the Civil War was fought over a huge stage and had innumerable “sideshows,” some bigger

than others


The Northern FrontAugust, 1918-Fall, 1919

General Evgenii Miller declared himself Governor- General of Northern Russia,

Kolchak appointed him commander of White forces

there


The Northern Front

•March, 1918- concern that the German army might move through Finland to seize the stockpile of war materials at Murmansk and Arkhangelsk led to the first Allied intervention

• June, 1918-after the Czech Legion’s initial easy victories, the British forces began to push southeast to link up with them

•American forces at both ports played minor local combat roles in response to Red partisan attacks

•fall,1919- after the White reverses, the Allies decide to pull out before winter ice made that impossible

• White forces were unable to withstand the Red build-up without their Western allies


The Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army

of Ukraine

this independent anarchist army fought both Reds and

Whites, intervening at crucial points

Nestor Ivanovich Makhno1888-1934


The Black Army

• Makhno, of Ukrainian peasant origins, joined anarchist organizations and was imprisoned, 1908-February, 1917

• 1918- Makhno organized anarchist forces to resist the German Ukrainian regime of Hetman Skoropadsky under the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk

• he is credited as the inventor of the tachanka, the horse-drawn carriage-mounted machine gun platform

• 1919-1920--the Black Army attempted to establish local anarchic peasant communes controlling lands “liberated” from local owners under “black partition”

• allegations of atrocities against both Mennonites and Jews as well as internal vendettas tarnished the army’s reputation

• 1919--Makhno’s guerrilla attacks behind the White Army’s summer offensive helped the Reds escape defeat, Wrangel also had to fight them in 1920

• 1921-after the White threat was past, the Reds ruthlessly destroyed their former allies


Other “Fronts”

•although Soviet chronology ends the Civil War in 1921, pockets of resistance carried on the fighting into 1923

•various Islamic nationalist movements required coercion in Soviet Central Asia and the Caucasus

•as late as 1922, a Menshevik Georgian Republic maintained an independent existance

•individual “warlords” in Siberia fought one another, often with Japanese backing

•1920-the Soviet-Polish War is sometimes considered to be part of the Civil War since much of the new country of Poland was once part of the empire. But the Paris Peace Settlement had recognized it as an independent nation. hence we will examine this next week as the attempt by Russia to “export” the Revolution


Of all the governments that were set up in Russia to combat revolutionary rule, only one, that of the Social Revolutionaries at Samara,[Komuch] had the wisdom to assure the peasants that the counterrevolution did not mean the restoration of the land to the landlords. All the rest, in greater or less degree, made plain their policy of reestablishing them [the landlords] or compensating them. It was this, and no transcendent virtue in the Bolsheviks, which decided the issue of the three years’ struggle, in despite of British tanks and French munitions and Japanese rifles and bayonets.

--MAYNARD

quoted in Riasanovsky, A History of Russia, vol. II, p. 460


American relief workers feeding Russian children during the 1921-22 famine

Aftermath of War


Moscow Trumpets the White Defeat


The New Empire


The New Empire


Sheroka Strana Moya Rodnaya

the photography of S.M. Prokudin-Gorsky, 1905-1915Wednesday, October 21, 2009
























































Using emerging technological advances in color photography, Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944) made numerous photographic trips to systematically document the Russian Empire. He conducted most of his visual surveys between 1909 and 1915, although some of his work dates as early as 1905. The Empire at this time stretched 7,000 miles from west to east and 3,000 miles from north to south and comprised one-sixth of the earth's land mass. It was the largest empire in history and spanned what today are eleven different times zones.

Tsar Nicholas II supported this ambitious project by providing passes and transportation: by rail, boat and automobile. Each journey made by Prokudin-Gorskii is represented by a photographic album and corresponding negatives. There is also an album of various studies, including views in Europe.


http://memory.loc.gov/pp/prokhtml/prokbiog.html




Study the ethnicityof the people

in the foreground

The message of this poster is that the

Red Army will bringtogether all the peoples

of the borderlandsunder the Red Banner

ofCommunism


The Struggle for the Borderlands

•Lenin had once called Imperial Russia “the prison house of nations.”

•as the Duchy of Muscovy expanded, beginning in the 13th century, the Great Russians added other Slavs and people wholly different

•Lenin’s original promise that these nations would have the Wilsonian right of self-determination was soon seen to be “inoperative”

•so alongside the war against the Village, the Civil War with the Whites, the Reds had to wage a third struggle to see how many of the borderlands would be allowed to break away, how many could be kept in what would become the USSR


the census of 1897•of the 125 million (exclusive of Finland), Russian speakers numbered 56

million, but ethnic Russians were probably 52 million (42%)

•85 distinct linguistic groups were recorded in this first and only census of the empire, the smallest of which numbered in the hundreds; from a political point of view, the minorities numbered fewer than a dozen

•22 million Ukrainians were the largest, then 8 million Poles, 6 million Byelorussians

•next to the Slavs were the 7 million Turko-Tatar groups professing Islam, mainly Sunni, scattered from the Black Sea to the Pacific

•most troublesome were the Poles. “It is difficult to understand how the Russians hoped to keep an ancient people, culturally much superior to the mass of their own population, in permanent subjection. But they acted as if they could because of Poland’s geopolitical importance to them as an outpost in Europe.”--Pipes, p. 276


Some escape, some are kept

•Baltikum, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, will be free until World War II because of the Allied presence there during the Civil War

•Finland, always the least “digested” of Russia’s conquests, also gains independence

•Poland, “a bridge too far,” will be discussed next week

•Georgians (1.4 million) and Armenians (1.2 million), an Orthodox Christian minority in the TransCaucasian muslim region, were not so fortunate. By 1922 they were enfolded into the USSR.

•the Islamic peoples of the Crimea, the Caspian Depression, and Central Asia, likewise; some fighting until 1924

•Mongolia became the first satellite with a captive Communist party but outside the USSR


Adolf Ioffe signs the Treaty of Tartu recognizing the independence of Estonia and Finland, 1920


On December 29, 1922 a conference of plenipotentiary delegations from the Russian SFSR, the Transcaucasian SFSR, the Ukrainian SSR and the Byelorussian SSR approved the Treaty of Creation of the USSR and the Declaration of the Creation of the USSR, forming the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. These two documents were confirmed by the 1st Congress of Soviets of the USSR and signed by heads of delegations - Mikhail Kalinin, Mikha Tskhakaya, Mikhail Frunze and Grigory Petrovsky, Aleksandr Chervyakov respectively on December 30, 1922.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_29




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_SFSR

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_SFSR

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcaucasian_SFSR

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcaucasian_SFSR

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_SSR

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_SSR

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byelorussian_SSR

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byelorussian_SSR

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Creation_of_the_USSR




http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Declaration_of_the_Creation_of_the_USSR&action=edit&redlink=1

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Declaration_of_the_Creation_of_the_USSR&action=edit&redlink=1

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congress_of_Soviets

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congress_of_Soviets

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Kalinin

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Kalinin

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mikha_Tskhakaya&action=edit&redlink=1

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mikha_Tskhakaya&action=edit&redlink=1

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Frunze




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grigory_Petrovsky

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grigory_Petrovsky

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Chervyakov

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Chervyakov







Education

Russian Civil War; 1918-1920