Causes of the defeat of the white movement. The main reasons for the defeat of the white movement

Why, after all, despite temporary successes and significant material and military assistance from abroad, did the white movement fail? First of all, because its leaders failed to offer the people a sufficiently constructive and attractive program. In the territories they controlled, the laws of the Russian Empire were restored, property was returned to its former owners. And although none of the white governments openly put forward the idea of ​​restoring the monarchical order, the popular consciousness perceived them as champions of the old government, for the return of the tsar and the landlords. The national policy of the white generals, their fanatical adherence to the slogan "one and indivisible Russia" was also suicidal. The White movement could not become the core consolidating all the anti-Bolshevik forces. Moreover, by refusing to cooperate with the socialist parties, the white generals themselves split the anti-Bolshevik front, turning the Mensheviks, Socialist-Revolutionaries, anarchists and their supporters into their opponents. And in the white camp itself there was no unity and interaction either in the political or in the military field. There was a hostile personal relationship between the leaders. Each of them aspired to superiority. The recognition of Admiral A. V. Kolchak as the “supreme ruler of Russia” was a purely formal act. The White movement did not have a leader whose authority would be recognized by all, who would understand that a civil war is not a battle of armies, but a battle of political programs, who would know how to maneuver, who would not flaunt close ties with foreign troops and governments.

And finally, according to the bitter admission of the white generals themselves, one of the reasons for the defeat was the moral decay of the army, the use of measures against the population that did not fit into the white code of honor: robberies, pogroms, punitive expeditions, violence. The white movement was started by “almost saints” and ended by “almost bandits” – such a verdict was passed by one of the ideologists of the white movement, the former leader of Russian nationalists V. V. Shulgin.

DOCUMENTATION

White movement in the assessment of the member of the Central Committee of the constitutional democratic party N. A. Astrov

In a broad sense, the white movement is all anti-Bolsheviks: socialists, democrats, liberals, conservatives, and even reactionaries. In a closer sense, they are only defenders of the old principles of monarchy and nationalism. The white movement begins in the first sense and ends in the second, gradually narrowing down and moving on to the ideals of monarchist restoration ... I will immediately point out three reasons for the failure of the white movement: 1) insufficient and untimely help from the allies, guided by narrowly selfish considerations, 2) the gradual strengthening of reactionary elements in composition of the movement and 3) as a consequence of the second, the disappointment of the masses in the white movement.

From the order of A. I. Denikin to the Special Meeting

In connection with my order of this year for No. 175, I order

The Special Meeting shall adopt the following provisions as the basis for its activities:

• 1. United, great, indivisible Russia. Faith defense. Establishing order...
• 2. Fight Bolshevism to the end.
• 3. Military dictatorship... Any opposition - right and left - to punish.

The question of the form of government is a matter for the future. The Russian people will elect the supreme power without pressure and without imposition...

4. Foreign policy - only national Russian ...

For help - not an inch of Russian land.

• 6. To continue the development of an agrarian and labor law ...
• 7. To improve the health of the front and the military rear - by the work of specially appointed generals with great powers, the composition of the field court and the use of extreme repression.

On the massacre of the villages that rebelled against Kolchak

I. In every village in the region of the uprising, search in detail those captured with weapons in their hands, as they shoot enemies on the spot.

II. Arrest, on the testimony of local residents, all agitators, members of the Soviets of Deputies who helped the uprising, deserters, accomplices and harborers, and bring them to a court-martial.

III. An unreliable and vicious element should be sent to the Berezovsky and Nerchinsk Territories, handing them over to the police.

IV. Local authorities who did not show proper resistance to the bandits, who carried out their orders and did not take all measures to eliminate the Reds with their own means, should be brought to a court-martial, the punishments increased to the death penalty, inclusive.

V. The villages that have risen again must be liquidated with redoubled severity, up to the destruction of the entire village.

Questions and tasks

1. How was Soviet power established in October 1917 - June 1918? In what areas of Russia was resistance to the Soviets significant? Why? 2. What was the significance of military intervention in unleashing a civil war? Why did the Entente governments not go for a large-scale invasion of Russia? 3. Describe the political platform of the leaders of the white movement A. I. Denikin and A. V. Kolchak. 4. What were the strengths and weaknesses of the white movement? Why did it fail?

Expanding vocabulary

Civil War -- organized armed struggle for power between citizens of one state.

Directory -- management, management, collective body of executive power.

People's Socialists(popular people) - members of one of the neo-populist parties (People's Socialist), which was formed from the right wing of the AKP in 1906.

The defeat of the interventionist troops was due to a number of reasons:

1. The participants in the intervention had vague goals, and each of the allies pursued personal interests.

2. The interventionist armies did not have the motivation to fight.

3. In fact, throughout the entire period of intervention, society did not support the actions of the interventionists; there was a social protest against the actions of the Entente countries in Russia.

4. Inconsistency between the goals of the interventionists and the Whites.

The last reason seems to determine the outcome of the described events. Presenting themselves as the defenders of Russia from Soviet power, the interventionists, however, did not fully cooperate with the White Guards, using them exclusively for their own purposes. The so-called allies did not fully trust each other and, accordingly, did not coordinate their actions. The interventionists tried to stay away from the ongoing events, but at the same time completely control them. Thus causing a distrustful attitude on the part of the Russians. An illustration of this can serve as information about the relationship between whites and interventionists contained in the essay by BF Sokolov (a member of the northern white government) "The Fall of the Northern Region". Sokolov writes that the isolation of the British from the Russian military was especially striking. Often, both of them lived side by side, and, however, there was no relationship between them. Everyone lived his own life, his own interests. The English kept to their circle, the Russians to theirs. But still, the British were more and less interested in the Russians, willingly entered into conversations with them, hosted and treated them.

The Russian soldiers were filled with some kind of instinctive unconscious hostility towards them. It is quite clear that in this state of affairs, with disunity and even hatred among people who fight for one goal, success cannot be achieved.

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III. Intervention of the Quadruple Alliance and the Entente in Russian affairs.

The intervention of foreign countries in Russian affairs went through two successive phases: 1) the Austro-German occupation regime; 2) intervention of the Entente countries. The intervention included an economic blockade, the political isolation of Soviet Russia, the sending of limited military contingents to Russia, and secret anti-Russian agreements on the division of spheres of influence. The motivation for the interventions was as follows:

1. The Quadruple Alliance sought to weaken Russia in every possible way and use its resources to continue the struggle against the Entente. In 1918, Ukraine, Crimea, part of the Kursk and Voronezh provinces were actually occupied by Germany. German troops landed in Finland and Georgia. Turkish troops were preparing to capture Baku. Even the defeat of Germany and its allies in the World War did not immediately abolish the occupation regime. According to the Compiègne truce, German troops were to stay in Russia until the Entente units arrived there.

2. The Entente countries during the world war tried to restore the anti-German front. In December 1917, a secret Anglo-French agreement was concluded on the division of "zones of action" in Russia in the event of its withdrawal from the war. The Allies intended to prevent the troops of Germany and its allies from entering the strategically important regions of Russia. In March 1918, the British troops occupied Murmansk under the pretext of protecting the region from German troops. In April 1918, the British troops captured Baku, but soon left the city when the Turkish army approached.

3. On the eve and after the defeat of the Quadruple Alliance, the countries of the Entente, under the guise of "moral obligations" to the former Russian allies, are trying to counteract Bolshevism. As the White armies suffered defeats, foreign governments came to the conclusion that it was inappropriate to provide military and material assistance to the White movement.

4. Due to geopolitical competition, the great powers sought to control the decaying parts of the Russian state. In December 1917, England and France reached an agreement on the division of spheres of influence in Russia: Great Britain claimed the Caucasus and the Cossack territories, France - Bessarabia, Ukraine and Crimea; Siberia and the Far East were considered as a sphere of interest for Japan and the United States.

Japan was the last to evacuate its troops from Russia, although the occupation of Northern Sakhalin by the Japanese continued until 1925.

The defeat of the White movement stemmed from the specifics of the Civil War and was due to the following factors:

1. The Bolsheviks managed to create a five million regular Red Army and provide it with military personnel. White armies did not receive such a massive character.

2. Political heterogeneity of the anti-Bolshevik forces. In the summer-autumn of 1918, the Bolsheviks were opposed by the governments of the so-called democratic counter-revolution, whose legislative and administrative activities were formed taking into account the theoretical ideas of the right SRs and Mensheviks about the long stage of capitalist development in Russia, the need to deepen bourgeois democracy and the evolutionary transition to a socialist society. The white movement, represented by the professional military, was influenced by the monarchists and the conservative part of the liberals, who adhered to the restoration or liberal programs of state building and modernization of the country. Rivalry and the struggle for power at all levels of political structures not only deprived the White movement of integrity, but erected insurmountable obstacles to achieving the ultimate goals of the struggle.

3. The prolonged absence of a unified command of the White movement. Only in May 1919 did Generals Denikin, Miller and Yudenich recognize the supreme power of Admiral Kolchak. At the beginning of 1920, the admiral resigned his title of Supreme Ruler in favor of General Denikin, who in turn transferred command to General Wrangel.

4. The White movement lacked popular slogans among the people. In the conditions of the national crisis in Russia, the White movement acted as a "party of order", which relied on the military dictatorship as a means of getting the country out of the crisis and disintegration. The slogan of "indeterminacy", which the generals adhered to, meant that the task of the movement was to defeat Bolshevism, after which the kind of Constituent Assembly would determine the future socio-political and economic structure of Russia. Such a position made logical sense, but was politically disastrous.

5. The democratic counter-revolution and the white movement did not find regular support among the peasant masses, on whose position the outcome of the Civil War depended. Local and often spontaneous peasant uprisings of 1918-1922, which could be manipulated, are the most important context of the civil war. Russian peasants did not value democratic freedoms, and were satisfied with economic concessions from the Bolsheviks. The danger of the restoration of landownership forced the peasants to come to terms with the Soviet regime. Only General Wrangel decided to carry out a broad land reform in favor of the peasantry, but it was too late. The white movement compromised itself in the eyes of the peasants.

6. The Whites were unable to establish interaction with the national movements, which were frightened off by the slogan "United and indivisible Russia." Only General Wrangel recognized the principle of federal autonomy as acceptable in state building (in relation to the Cossack regions).

7. The Bolsheviks owned Central Russia and could use the economic and human resources located here. The White movement had discontinuous fronts and after the fall of Samara was on the periphery of the country, in the sparsely populated steppe regions of the South and Siberia. Vast spaces and extended communications provided strategic advantages, but rather for a long retreat than for a campaign against Moscow and Petrograd.

8. The civil war in Russia coincided with the political crisis that engulfed most of the European countries after the end of the First World War, which reduced the scale of intervention and foreign aid to the White movement.

AID OF THE ENTENTE TO THE WHITE MOVEMENT DURING THE CIVIL WAR: THE REVERSE SIDE

I. Maslennikov

For a long time in Russian historiography, there was an opinion that the White Army was a powerful force only thanks to the supply of weapons and equipment from the Anglo-French invaders. The thesis dominated that the Entente and the Whites were one force that wanted to destroy Russia and enslave her. Today, this point of view is shared by some Russian historians. However, an objective consideration of the situation, it turns out quite different: the Entente supplied white equipment, ammunition and weapons in small quantities. Nine months until February 1919, the Allies left the Whites alone with their fate. Here is how General Wrangel writes about this: "The supply of the army was purely accidental, mainly at the expense of the enemy." General Denikin in this matter is in solidarity with the ruler of the "White" Crimea: "The main source of supply until February 1919 was the Bolshevik stocks we seized." Apparently, the interventionists were in no hurry to help the whites.

Undoubtedly, the supplies of the Entente to the white armies took place, but in a specific context: it was ordinary trade and barter. The same General Denikin writes about this in his five-volume work: “Since August, the French mission has been negotiating about“ economic compensations ”in exchange for the supply of military equipment and after sending one or two transports with an insignificant amount of supplies ... Maklakov telegraphed from Paris that the French the government "is compelled to stop the dispatch of ammunition" if we "do not undertake to supply an appropriate amount of wheat."

So the allies sponsored the whites "free of charge", and deliveries began only in February 1919, and then in very meager volumes. Denikin writes: "Since the beginning of 1919, we have received from the British 558 guns, 12 tanks, 1,685,522 shells and 160 million rifle cartridges." The question rightly arises: is it a lot or a little? A comparison is needed here. In his memoirs Drozdovtsy on Fire, Major General Turkul writes: “The heavy battle near Heidelberg reminded us of the battles of the Great War. We fired up to five thousand shells, red, I think, two times more. » . As can be seen from the cited memoirs, the Reds were stronger and higher in terms of numbers. The artillery assistance of the British to the White Guards was not full-fledged and of high quality, although the allies at first assured that they would help Denikin's armies in every possible way.

It is noteworthy that when the Armed Forces of the South of Russia are preparing to attack Moscow in accordance with the Denikin directive of July 3, 1919, a very unpleasant fact is revealed: “In general, there was no quartermaster supply. The sale of military booty was the only source that enabled the squadrons to continue to form and deploy into formations. The army is even understaffed. It should be noted that the invaders did not participate in the hostilities at all. Already in the summer of 1919, almost all of them were evacuated to their homes. An important proof that the interventionist troops did not think and did not intend to fight against the Bolsheviks is a quotation from the book of General Denikin: “Hopes for the implementation of the campaign plan with the support of the Allied armies have long been undermined, if not completely lost. We had to rely only on the Russian forces.

What was the position of the Russian forces? For example, when Kolchak starts his general offensive in the same 1919, strange things are revealed. At that moment, there were very big problems with ammunition, then the White Guard horsemen rode on the attack, putting a pillow on the horse instead of a saddle. The cavalry was then an important branch of the army. It is her importance that will be decisive. Also, evidence that the interventionists were in no hurry to help the whites will be confirmed by a quote from the book of the American historian Richard Pipes: “Only the British intervened actively, taking the side of the anti-Bolshevik forces, but they acted without much enthusiasm, mainly on the initiative of one person - Winston Churchill. Their efforts were, however, neither consistent nor persistent, since the supporters of reconciliation were stronger in the West than the supporters of military intervention.

Moreover, this trend of the Entente is not surprising. Recall at least the history of the extradition of Admiral Kolchak. After all, it was the French who gave the admiral to the Socialist-Revolutionary Political Center, which then handed him over to the Bolsheviks. To all questions, General Zhanen, representative of the High Inter-Allied Command and Commander-in-Chief of the Allied Forces in Siberia and the Far East, answered: “I must repeat, gentlemen, that even less ceremony was done with His Majesty Emperor Nicholas II.”

Separately, it is necessary to highlight the issue of the North-Western Army of General Yudenich, the attack on Petrograd and the "help" of the British. For a long time, Soviet historians covered this issue as "the united campaign of the Entente against Soviet Russia." Lenin himself, in a report at the IX Congress of the RCP (b), said that there had been a "two-fold, three-fold and four-fold campaign of the Entente imperialists." However, in reality this was not the case. The first commander of the Northwestern Army, General A.P. Rodzianko writes in his memoirs: “We did not receive help from anywhere, we did not have boots or overcoats, and we took shells and cartridges from the enemy.” So White went on the attack: no equipment, no help. Rodzianko hopes for English help from the sea, but receives an unspoken refusal: “Unfortunately, we had the most uncertain relations with the English fleet. I repeatedly asked to establish contact, but for some reason the English admiral did not want this connection, but preferred to confine himself only to communication with the commander of the Estonian flotilla. And here the British did not help, although May-June 1919 was one of the active phases of the offensive of the North-Western Army. Alexander Kuprin wrote very well about how the British “helped” Yudenich’s army, being a soldier of the North-Western Army: “The British promised weapons. Shells, uniforms and food. It would be better if they did not promise anything! The guns sent by them could withstand no more than three shots, after the fourth the cartridge was wedged so tightly in the muzzle that it could only be pulled out in the workshop. Further, the Russian writer describes the “allied assistance” even more colorfully: “The British sent airplanes, but they applied unsuitable propellers to them, machine guns - and inappropriate tapes to them, guns - and unexploding shrapnel and grenades to them.” The historian Kornatovsky confirms this in his monograph: “The hope of General N.N. Yudenich to receive timely and serious support from the English squadron from the sea was only the result of naive gullibility. No wonder he lost. Then the Northwestern Army began its retreat, ending in Estonia, where the entire army was placed in concentration camps. There are cases when Estonian soldiers undressed soldiers and robbed them right in the cold. Yudenich appeals to the allies to release his soldiers. They promise to do it for 800 thousand pounds. Yudenich did not have such a sum.

One of the major chords of the finale of the White Struggle is the Wrangel Crimea. From April to November 1920, a black baron ruled over this area. All the same Soviet historiography tried to prove that Wrangel was a mercenary of the Entente and her protege. Even the officials of the Soviet Republic pointed to this: "There is no doubt that the Wrangel offensive was dictated by the Entente in order to alleviate the plight of the Poles." However, this is what Wrangel himself says regarding the “help” that he “received” from the allies: “Gasoline, oil, rubber were delivered abroad with great difficulty, and there was a huge shortage of them. Everything we needed was purchased partly in Romania, partly in Bulgaria, partly in Georgia .... The British put up all sorts of obstacles for us, delayed the passage of goods under all sorts of pretexts. And that's not all: Wrangel did not see any help. They interfered with him, about which he himself writes in his own memoirs: “We did not have the currency to purchase everything necessary.” This was the moment when the Reds rushed to the Crimea, when the Whites were bleeding. Despite this, Vasily Maklakov, in a letter to B.A. Bakhmetyev, noted the following: “He occupied the well-known line from the Dnieper to the Sea of ​​\u200b\u200bAzov, a part of Northern Tavria, sufficient to feed the entire population, because of it he does not leave; in case of failure, he fortified Perekop for the first time and so strongly that it can be considered impregnable. The fighting near Kakhovka is Wrangel's last chance to gain a foothold in the Crimea. The Reds put barbed wire in the way of the White Guard units. The white army did not have scissors to cut these barriers. France promised, but did not send them. As a result, White retreats. Almost at the same time, the Poles made peace with the Bolsheviks, untying their hands in the elimination of Wrangel in the Crimea. The Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Army himself states this with truthful accuracy: "The Poles in their duplicity turned out to be true to themselves."

Summarizing all of the above, we can draw a direct and significant conclusion that the interventionists did not provide mass and large-scale assistance to the White Guard armies. They did not consider this a necessary thing, although they assured in every possible way that they would definitely help the anti-Bolshevik front. With what it could be connected? Here you can quote Doctor of Historical Sciences Natalya Narochnitskaya: “The meaning of the so-called intervention in Russia was also not at all in the goal of crushing Bolshevism and communist ideology, but also not in the goal of helping the White movement to restore the former united Russia. The main motives were always geopolitical and military-strategic, which explains the alternate cooperation or partnership with the Red Army against the White Army, then vice versa, which ended in general with the betrayal of the White Army by the Entente. The British, French and their allies did not want to see a strong and powerful Russia, for which the whites stood up. It was not in their interest. For example, the desire to dismember Russia was also noted in one of the parliamentary speeches of British Prime Minister Lloyd George. The second time he said something like this in the British Parliament on November 17, 1919, when Denikin’s white front retreated to the Crimea: “The expediency of assisting Admiral Kolchak and General Denikin is all the more controversial because they are“ fighting for United Russia ”... It’s not for me to indicate, it corresponds whether this slogan is the policy of Great Britain ... One of our great people, Lord Beaconsfield, saw in the vast, mighty and great Russia, rolling like a glacier towards Persia, Afghanistan and India, the most formidable danger to the British Empire ... ". Thus, there is no need to talk about any large and supermaterial assistance from the Entente to the White armies. The real picture shows quite the opposite.

war entente white guard

Literature

1. Semenov Yu.I. White cause against red cause // Kommunist. 1996. No. 3. pp. 102-116

Wrangel P.N. Memories. M.: Veche, 2012. S. 8

Egorov A.I. The defeat of Denikin. M.: Veche, 2012. S. 84

Denikin A.I. Armed Forces of the South of Russia. M.: Veche, 2013. T. 5. S. 89

Denikin A.I. Essays on Russian Troubles. Berlin: Slovo, 1925. V. 4. S. 86

Turkul A.V. The Drozdovites are on fire. L.: Ingria, 1991. S. 164

Kirmel N.S. White Guard intelligence services in the Civil War. 1918−1922 M.: Kuchkovo Pole, 2008. S. 45, 213

Denikin A.I. Armed Forces of the South of Russia. M.: Veche, 2013. T. 5. S. 3

Molchanov V.M. Struggle in the East of Russia and Siberia / Eastern Front of Admiral Kolchak. M.: Tsentrpoligraf, 2004. S. 416

Pipes R. Russian Revolution in 3 books. Book. 2. Bolsheviks in the struggle for power. 1917-1918. M.: Zakharov, 2005. S. 352

Romanov A.M. Book of memories. M.: AST, 2008. S. 361

Lenin and the defense of the Socialist Fatherland // V.I. Lenin on the historical experience of the Great October Revolution: a collection of articles / Institute of History of the USSR, Academy of Sciences of the USSR. M.: Nauka, 1969. S. 435

Rodzianko A.P. Memories of the North-Western Army / White Struggle in the North-West of Russia. M.: Tsentrpoligraf, 2003. S. 213

There. S. 236

Kuprin A.I. Dome of St. Isacius of Dolmatsky. M.: Veche, 2007. S. 81

There. S. 82

Kornatovsky N.A. Fight for Red Petrograd. M.: AST, 2004. S. 574

There. pp. 528-529

There. S. 546

Starikov N.V. Liquidation of Russia. Who helped the Reds win the Civil War? St. Petersburg: Piter, 2012. S. 350-351 22. Wrangel P.N. Notes / White movement. M.: Vagrius, 2006. S. 887

Wrangel P.N. Notes / White movement. M.: Vagrius, 2006. S. 956

Narochnitskaya N.A. Russia and Russians in world history. M.: International relations, 2004. S. 231

Denikin A.I. Decree op. M.: Veche, 2013. T. 5. S. 91

The content of the article

WHITE GUARD(White movement, White deed) - a military-political movement that arose after the abdication of the throne of the Russian Emperor Nicholas II in the summer and autumn of 1917. It arose under the slogan of saving the fatherland and restoring pre-February statehood, which implied the return and restoration of lost power, socio-economic rights and relations, market economy and reunification with the lost regions that broke away from the Russian Empire in 1918.

The White Guard during the bloody Civil War of 1918–1922 against the dictatorship of the Bolsheviks (“Reds”), against the “Greens” (armed formations of Cossacks and peasants who fought against both the Whites and the Reds), the Petliurists of the Ukrainian Directory, the armed formations of N.I. .Makhno, against parts of the Georgian Democratic Republic (liberation of Sochi and the Black Sea province) in the following main areas:

- southern: Don, Kuban, Donbass, Stavropol province, Black Sea province, North Caucasus, eastern Ukraine, Crimea;

- eastern: the Volga region, the Urals, Siberia, the Far East;

- northwestern: Petrograd, Yamburg, Pskov, Gatchina.

The emergence of the White movement.

By the end of August, the situation at the front deteriorated catastrophically - the German troops went on the offensive and captured the well-fortified city of Riga.

After the defeat in Courland, the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, General L.G. Kornilov, sent the corps of General Krymov to Petrograd to protect the capital. Kerensky regarded this move as an attempt by Kornilov to overthrow the Provisional Government and establish a military dictatorship. The corps of General Krymov was stopped. By order of Kerensky, Petrograd workers were given weapons from state warehouses in order to "defend" the capital, which marked the beginning of the formation of the Red Guard. The Supreme Commander-in-Chief, General Kornilov, addressed an appeal to the Russian people, accusing the Provisional Government of conspiring with the Bolsheviks and the German General Staff, and openly opposed Kerensky, but he himself was accused of attempting counter-revolution, treason and rebellion, removed from the post of commander-in-chief and arrested. Many prominent generals of the Headquarters and fronts suffered the same fate. Communication between officers and soldiers was broken completely. The lawyer Kerensky declared himself the Supreme Commander, which caused bewilderment and indignation among the officer corps.

Many contemporaries and historians consider the performance of General Kornilov the beginning of the emergence of the White movement in Russia.

The symbolism of the white color should be interpreted as the personification of legitimate statehood and the restoration of the old order. Hence - "White Guard", "White Movement", "White Deed", "White Guards" and simply "Whites". Soviet historiography called "white" armed formations that fought against Soviet power during the Civil War - the Czechoslovak corps (White Czechs), the Polish armed forces (White Poles), the Finnish resistance (White Finns).

The beginning of the armed resistance of the White movement during the Civil War 1918–1922.

After the October Revolution, the generals arrested by Kerensky (Kornilov, Denikin, Markov, etc.), who were awaiting trial in Bykhov, were released on November 19 by the Chief of Staff of the Supreme Commander, Lieutenant General Dukhonin, who, after the news of the release of Kornilov, was torn to pieces by an angry crowd of soldiers.

Once free, the generals went to the Don, where General A.M. Kaledin was chieftain. The Don region was proclaimed independent of the power of the Soviets "until the formation of a nationwide, popularly recognized authority." The General of Infantry M.V. Alekseev, who arrived on the Don, began the formation of the paramilitary "Alekseevskaya organization" (later - the Volunteer Army) in Novocherkassk. Generals Kaledin and Kornilov joined him.

In Orenburg, Colonel N.N. Dutov declared disobedience to the Bolsheviks and gathered around him various Cossack military units.

In Transbaikalia, the Yesaul of the Transbaikal Cossack army G.M. Semenov, with Cossack units loyal to him, resisted the Bolshevik armed formations, having already created in January 1918 the Special Manchurian Detachment, which later became the basis for further armed struggle against the Soviets in the Far East.

Similar military formations arose in Siberia, the Urals, the Volga region and other regions of Russia.

Astrakhan, Terek, Don and Kuban Cossacks were closely associated with the Volunteer Army in southern Russia.

In the north-west of Russia in the Petrograd direction, pockets of resistance to the Soviets were created under the command of generals N.N. Yudenich, A.P. Arkhangelsky, E.K. Miller.

At first, the Bolsheviks managed to relatively quickly establish the power of the Soviets, to break and liquidate the resistance of scattered parts of the volunteer officers, Cossacks and junkers.

In January 1918, the Council of People's Commissars (SNK), headed by V.I. Lenin, adopted a decree on the organization of the Workers 'and Peasants' Red Army (RKKA).

However, after the conclusion of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in March 1918, the "surplus appraisal" in the countryside, the terror against the peasantry, the nobility, the clergy, the officer corps, the issuance of a decree on the separation of the state from the church, the execution of the royal family in Yekaterinburg in the summer of 1918, the Bolsheviks lost the support of many regions of Russia. The white movement, on the contrary, received an economic and social base in the grain-growing southern and eastern regions of the country for further struggle against the Soviets.

White Movement on the Eastern Front.

At the end of May 1918, while in the area of ​​Tambov and Penza, the Czechoslovak corps (about 50 thousand people), which was formed in 1917 from captured Slavs (Czechs and Slovaks) of the Austro-Hungarian army, with the support of Entente agents, revolted against the Soviet power and took the side of the counter-revolutionaries. Many historians consider this the start of the Russian Civil War. Together with the Russian officers who came out of the underground, the White Czechs overthrew the Soviet government and captured a number of cities - Chelyabinsk, Novonikolaevsk (Novosibirsk), Penza, Tomsk, etc. In June 1918 Kurgan, Omsk, Samara, Vladivostok were occupied; in July - Ufa, Simbirsk, Yekaterinburg, Kazan. Thus, in a short time, in the territory from the Volga to the Pacific Ocean, the Bolsheviks practically lost their power. The Provisional Siberian Government is being created in Omsk; in Yekaterinburg - the Ural government, in Samara - the Committee of the Constituent Assembly ("Komuch").

In November 1918, Admiral Kolchak organized an armed coup in Omsk against the so-called. "Directorate" headed by the Social Revolutionaries, announced the acceptance of full power and proclaimed himself the Supreme Ruler of the Russian state.

At the end of November 1918, captured back in May by Colonel V.O. Kappel in Kazan, the gold reserves of the Russian Empire (about 500 tons) were transported to Omsk and placed in the Omsk branch of the State Bank. Admiral A.V. Kolchak introduced the strictest accountability, thanks to which it was possible to avoid the wholesale looting of Russian treasures. However, after the collapse of the eastern front at the end of 1919, the gold reserve was taken to Vladivostok and, under pressure from the Entente, transferred to the protection of the White Czechs. But already in early January 1920, the gold reserves were seized by the Bolsheviks and sent back to Kazan, having "lost weight" during this time by about 180 tons.

At the end of 1918, troops under the command of Admiral Kolchak captured Perm, and in March 1919 Samara and Kazan were occupied. By April 1919, Kolchak occupied the entire Urals and reached the Volga.

However, the bulk of the peasantry did not support Admiral Kolchak and the idea of ​​the White movement, and in the fall of 1919 mass desertion from the Siberian army began, as a result of which the Kolchak front collapsed. "Green" armed gangs were organized, which fought both against the whites and against the reds. Peasants en masse began to join the Bolshevik detachments.

The white Czechs treacherously conspired with the Bolsheviks and handed over Admiral Kolchak to the Reds, after which, on February 7, 1920, the Supreme Ruler of the Russian state, Admiral Kolchak, was shot together with the Chairman of the Ministers of the Russian government, monarchist V.N. Pepelyaev.

A month earlier, at the beginning of January 1920, Admiral Kolchak issued a decree declaring his intention to transfer the entirety of supreme power to General A.I. Denikin.

White movement in the south of Russia.

Alekseev, General of Infantry, who arrived on the Don in November 1917, began the formation of the Alekseevskaya Organization in Novocherkassk.

The volunteer army replaced the paramilitary formation of the Alekseevskaya Organization, which in early 1918 was headed by General Kornilov by agreement with General Alekseev. On the Don, generals Kaledin, Alekseev and Kornilov formed the so-called. triumvirate. Ataman Kaledin was the ruler of the Don region.

The army was formed on the Don. The relationship between Alekseev and Kornilov was rather complicated. There were frequent disagreements among the generals about the strategic and tactical perception of the situation. The army was small for a number of reasons, one of which was the ignorance of the broad masses about the goals of the Volunteer Army and about its leadership. This was exacerbated by a catastrophic lack of finance and food. The robbery of military and clothing warehouses flourished.

In this difficult situation, General Alekseev turned to the governments of the Entente countries with a proposal to finance the Volunteer Army, which, after the defeat of the Bolsheviks, was supposed to continue the war with Kaiser Germany.

The Entente agreed to finance the armed formations of the Volunteer Army, and already in January 1918 the army leadership received money from the French and American governments.

However, most of the Don Cossacks after the October Revolution did not share the views of the white generals. The tension between the emerging Volunteer Army and the Cossacks in Novocherkassk was growing. In this regard, on January 17, 1918, the Volunteer Army was forced to relocate to Rostov. The Cossacks of General Kaledin did not follow their chieftain to Rostov, and on January 28, 1918, General Kaledin, who stood at the origins of the Volunteer Army, committed suicide with a shot in the heart.

The Commander-in-Chief of the Volunteer Army was General of Infantry Kornilov, his deputy and successor in the event of the death of the first - Lieutenant General Denikin. Infantry General M.V. Alekseev was the chief treasurer and was responsible for external relations of the Volunteer Army, Lieutenant General A.S. Lukomsky was the chief of staff of the army.

On April 13, according to the new style, 1918, during the assault on Yekaterinodar (the first Kuban ice campaign), General Kornilov, commander-in-chief of the Volunteer Army, died from a stray grenade explosion. General Denikin took over the leadership of the army.

On October 8, 1918, General Alekseev dies of pneumonia in Ekaterinodar, and General Denikin, after his death, becomes the sole Supreme Leader of the Volunteer Army.

In early January 1919, the Armed Forces of the South of Russia (VSYUR) were created by combining the Volunteer Army and the All-Great Don Army to continue the fight against the Bolsheviks under the general command of General Denikin.

On April 4, 1920, after the defeat in the south of Russia and the retreat of the White Guard units to the Crimea, the commander-in-chief of the All-Union Socialist Republic, Lieutenant-General Denikin, leaves his post and transfers the supreme command to Baron Wrangel.

Thus, the resistance of the White movement in southern Russia in the second half of 1920 continued only in the Crimea under the leadership of Baron Wrangel. In November 1920, the commander of the defense of the Crimea, General A.P. Kutepov, could not hold back the advance of the army of Nestor Makhno, who fought at that time on the side of the Bolsheviks, and then the Red Army units under the command of Frunze.

About 100 thousand of the remaining White Guards, together with the last commander-in-chief of the All-Union Socialist Republic, Baron P.N. Wrangel, were evacuated from the Crimea to Istanbul with the support of the Entente fleet.

After that, a long and painful stage of the White emigration began.

The actions of the Volunteer Army in the south of Russia can be divided into the following stages:

2. The first (ice) Kuban campaign and the unsuccessful assault on Yekaterinodar (February - April 1918);

3. The second Kuban campaign and the capture of Yekaterinodar, the Kuban region, the Black Sea province, the Stavropol province, the Don and the entire North Caucasus (June - December 1918);

4. The battle for the Donbass, Tsaritsyn, Voronezh, Orel, a campaign against Moscow (January - November 1919);

5. Retreat of the Volunteer Army from Kharkov, Donbass, Kyiv, Rostov, Kuban to Novorossiysk and withdrawal by sea to the Crimea (November 1919 - April 1920);

6. Defense of the Crimea under the command of Baron Wrangel (April - November 1920).

Organization of the Volunteer Army.

At first, the core of the Volunteer Army consisted of a cavalry battalion, an engineering company, officer and cadet battalions, and several artillery batteries. It was a small, but rather strong military formation in terms of combat and morale, which included about 4 thousand people, 80% of which were officers, ensigns and non-commissioned officers.

On February 22, 1918, units of the Red Army approached Rostov. The leadership of the Volunteer Army, in view of the superiority of the Reds, decided to leave Rostov and retreat to the village of Olginskaya, where Kornilov reorganized the army.

In March 1918, after the unsuccessful assault on Yekaterinodar (now Krasnodar) in the Kuban during the First Kuban Ice Campaign, the Volunteer Army united with the Kuban detachment and returned back to the Don. The size of the army increased to 6 thousand people.

The Volunteer Army did not have a permanent staff. During the period of its maximum power in the summer of 1919, it included 2 army corps under the command of generals Kutepov and Promtov; cavalry corps of Lieutenant General Shkuro; Terek plastun brigade; Taganrog and Rostov garrisons, the number of which reached up to 250 thousand bayonets and cavalry. Artillery, tanks, aviation, armored trains, engineering troops were used centrally, and thanks to this, the Volunteer Army was a military success, effectively interacting with various branches of the military. Armament and equipment were supplied by the Entente. A very important factor in the success of the Whites was the officer corps as part of the Volunteer Army, which fought with admirable persistence and self-sacrifice. The small army of the White Guards won many victories over the many times superior units of the Red Army. The officer corps took on the main blows of the Reds, as a result of which the best combat-ready formations suffered losses that were physically impossible to make up for.

Causes of the defeat of the White movement.

The reasons for the defeat of the "White Idea", which can be attributed to the entire White movement, which operated on various fronts of the Civil War, is the totality of contradictions in ideology, strategy, tactics, and the approach to resolving economic and agrarian issues in wartime and military dictatorship.

- The lack of clear concepts of a way out of the political and economic crisis could not but deprive the white movement of social support from the masses and the peasantry.

- The complete inconsistency in actions between the White Guard formations in Siberia, the South and the West made it possible for the Bolsheviks to defeat the White regimes one by one.

- The betrayal by the allies and the support of the Entente countries for the new state formations that broke away from the Russian Empire in the Caucasus, Ukraine, the Baltic States, Finland, etc. could not but cause mistrust of the Entente on the part of the White movement, which did not want to recognize the new formations and fought for a "united and indivisible."

- In military terms, the main stake was placed on the officer corps, the prosperous Cossacks and complete disregard and contempt for the "soldier" and the peasant masses, which could not but cause the hostility of the latter and general desertion and going over to the side of the "socially close" Reds.

- Successful actions of the Red Army, partisan and gangster "green" detachments in the White Guard rear, disorganized the management and supply of units.