|
The Civil war that
erupted in Russia
right on the heels of the October Socialist Revolution of 1917 ran parallel
with the First World War. The then Imperialist Russia
entered the war on the side of the Entente Alliance, which also united England and France.
After
the October Socialist revolution Russian society was split into the ‘red’ and
the ‘white’ camps, those sympathizing with one of the two, or those who
refused to accept either. The Entente alliance opted for supporting the
‘white’ movement, since it was a force that spoke out for continuing the war
to its logical victorious end. With the purpose of helping the ‘whites’, the
Triple Entente launched an intervention into Russia.
From
the autumn of 1918 the Alliance
significantly broadened the scale of its intervention. It augmented its
supplies of military hardware, munitions, equipment and money to the White
Guards. Foreign advisers and instructors were rushed to the headquarters of
the ‘white’ Generals and Cossack chieftains. These foreigners declared their
burning desire to help the Russian people do away with the ‘bolshevist
scourge’ and ‘aid them in ‘bringing order to the country’.
So
was this really the case? How did the intervention impact the results of the
Civil war in Russia?
We shall make an attempt to answer these questions.
Doctor
of History Professor Olshtynsky noted that already during World War One the
Entente Alliance, while supporting the anti-bolshevist forces, gradually went
from ‘concealed’ intervention to open warfare on the territory of Russia,
dividing it up into spheres of influence. He wrote, in part: “The idea of
dissecting and subjugating Russia
was formulated in the decisions of the English-French conference of December
9th-10th 1917, and December 23rd saw the signing of an agreement on joint
intervention and division of spheres of influence under the heading
“Conditions of the Convention, agreed in Paris on December 23rd 1917”. According to
it the English were granted the territory of the Cossacks, Armenia and Georgia;
the French zones comprised Bessarabia, Ukraine, Crimea…
This plan received complete approval from the USA. According to the American
leadership, the dissection of Russia
should be carried out by means of ‘acknowledging the provisional governments
in different regions of Russia,
extending support to these governments…”
The
first to launch the intervention was Romania,
by occupying Bessarabia in early 1918. On
March 9th an English landing party, later joined by French and American
troops, came ashore in Murmansk.
In
early April 1918 an agreement was reached between the governments of the USA, Japan,
Great Britain and France on the beginning of a joint
intervention in the Far East and Siberia.
On
April 5th the Japanese landed in Vladivostok,
to be later joined by American, French and English forces.
After
Murmansk was seized, the invaders began to
prepare for the capture of Archangel, in the
Russian North-West. For this purpose they fanned a ‘white guard’ riot there.
Simultaneously
the German forces, violating the peace agreement with Soviet Russia,
continued their onslaught and  occupied the Crimean Peninsula,
after which they seized one of the largest southern towns of Russia – Rostov-on-the-Don, and also the Taman peninsula in the North Caucuses. In the
Transcaucuses the Kaiser and Turkish troops were, likewise, proceeding with
their advance. On the occupied territories the invaders rooted out Soviet
power and established a regime of military terror.”
By
that time neither the ‘reds’ nor the ‘whites’ had any doubts that the
invaders were not so much aiding the White powers as pursuing their own
interests of colonizing Russia.
Even
the paragon of Russian liberalism Pavel Miliukov, who was in Great Britain since the beginning of 1919,
admitted: “The west is now putting forward in no ambiguous terms the notion
of exploiting Russia as a
rich in natural wealth colony for providing Europe
with raw materials.”
If
this was written by so staunch a proponent of western ideals as Miliukov,
then we cannot put to doubt the truthfulness of his ‘diagnosis’.
Winston Churchill rejoiced:
“All
Russian territory from the river Volga to the Pacific
Ocean, almost equal in size to the African continent, is now
under the control of the allies.”
However,
this rejoicing was premature. Events took a turn that gradually dimmed the
hopes of the invaders.
As
is known, on November 11th 1918 Germany and its allies
surrendered to the Entente alliance. Two days later the Soviet government
annulled the depredatory Brest accords with Germany.
 It likewise succeeded in
strengthening its positions inside the country. The threat of their homeland
possibly becoming a colony of the West inspired many opponents of Soviet
power to side with it in the struggle against the invaders. So in response to
the invading onslaught at the end of 1918 a powerful patriotic upsurge swept Russia.
There was a steady stream of volunteers to join the Red Army, while the
partisan movement gathered force in the occupied territories.
Those
who previously sympathized with the ‘white power’ altered their attitude
towards it, since the latter were now regarded in the light of traitors,
siding with the invaders. This alone, not to mention other reasons, made the
defeat of the ‘whites’ in the Civil war inevitable.
As
a result of the successful advance of the Red Army many grain and energy
regions of the country were liberated, besides Byelorussia and the Baltics. 40
million people were liberated from foreign occupation.
In
1919 the ‘white movement’ undertook three powerful onslaughts against Soviet
Russia. According to historian Pyotr Deinichenko: “Admiral Kolchak, who
launched a successful advance in March, instead of joining up with forces led
by General Denikin in the vicinity of the Volga town of Saratov, decided to
head for Moscow on his own, nurturing the impetuous plan of capturing it
single-handedly. This provided the Red Army with freedom of maneuver, and the
opportunity of beating the armies of Kolchak and Denikin separately.
Kolchak
was forced to retreat. In his rear a peasants’ revolt erupted, sparked by an
ill-thought-out decree on returning the land to its initial owners – the
landowners. Red partisans captured Kolchak prisoner and in February of 1920
the Admiral was executed by a firing squad in the Siberian town of Irkutsk.
In
the meantime, in the south of Russia, the army of ‘white’ General Anton
Denikin was forced to engage in combat with the armies of the Independent
Ukraine, where all power was then in the hands of socialist and nationalist
Simon Petliura, equally antagonistic towards the ‘reds’ and the ‘whites’.
Simon Petliura fought successfully with the Red Army and its ally, notorious
anarchist Nestor Makhno. Only after he’d coped with the forces of the
Independent Ukraine was Denikin able to launch a powerful offensive. He had
at his disposal a 150 thousand strong army and initially his actions were
extremely successful.
However,
by spring of 1920 Denikin’s army was ousted from the Russian south, from Ukraine
and the north Caucuses, where Soviet power was
reestablished. The remnants of Denikin’s army retreated to the Black sea and
evacuated from Novorossiysk to Turkey and Crimea.
Anton Denikin himself left for Constantinople
aboard an English torpedo boat, leaving General Pyotr Wrangel to command the
scattered remnants of his army.”
In
1919 Europe and America
witnessed a swelling public movement under the slogan “Hands off Soviet Russia!”
This movement fomented revolutionary stirrings within the occupationist
forces. While earlier, socialist revolutions had taken place in Germany
and Austro-Hungary.
The
mushrooming of communist parties in many countries of the world led to the
formation of the III Communist International, the 1st Congress of which was
held in Moscow
on March 4th 1919. Addressing it, Vladimir Lenin said this in part:
“Throughout
the world the tide is turning towards the revolutionary struggle. The First
World War clearly demonstrated that socialism has perished. A new order is
coming in its stead. The old word ‘socialism’ has been sullied by traitors to
the socialist cause. Now the workers who remain faithful to the notion of
overthrowing capitalism are calling themselves ‘communists’. The union of
communists is gathering force all across the world. In a number of countries
Soviet power has already come out victorious. We do not have long to wait
before we shall have cause to rejoice in the triumph of communism throughout
the world. We shall witness the founding of the World Federative
Republic of the
Soviets.”
The
International communist movement was gaining strength. This couldn’t but
inject the Bolsheviks with additional political support, boosting their
morale. In these conditions the invaders were forced to withdraw their troops
from Russia.
Thus, by March 1920 detachments of the Red Army, actively supported by the
partisans and insurgent movement, succeeded in routing all the ‘white’ armies
and forcing the invaders out of Russia.
However,
after a brief lull the war action resumed. This time against Poland
and Pyotr Wrangel.
The
regional Russian newspaper “Tver Veche”, recalling the history of
Russo-Polish relations, recently wrote:
“As
is known, the Polish state was formed in November 1918, after the annulment
of the Brest
peace accords. From the outset the government of Yusef Pilsudsky adopted an
uncompromisingly hostile stance towards Soviet Russia. In February 1919 the
Polish Army armed and directly supported by the countries of the Entente
Alliance, invaded the territories of Byelorussia
and Lithuania.
They pursued an aggressively expansionist policy. Thus, the Soviet-Polish
front came into being.
The
main bulk of the Red Army was concentrated at the time in the East and the
South of the country: the Civil war was raging. The scanty soviet troops in
the west were unable to fend off the onslaught of the superior bulk of the
Polish army. The invaders seized Western Byelorussia and Western
Ukraine. Then came Kiev.
 A leading expert of the
history-archive and war memorial centre of the General Staff headquarters of
the Russian Federation Mikhail Filimoshin quotes the description of the
beginning of the undeclared Polish-Soviet war, that the American representative
at the Entente mission in Poland Major-General Kernan sent in his report to
the USA President. According to him: “although in Poland all reports and general
talk constantly makes mention of the bolsheviks’ aggression, one sees nothing
to substantiate this. Quite the opposite, even minor skirmishes on the
Eastern borders of Poland sooner testify to aggression on the part of the
Poles and their intention of seizing Russian lands as soon as possible.”
Poland sought to reestablish its state
within the boundaries dating back to 1772.
In
early May the Poles seized Kiev and by the
middle of the month reached the left bank of the Dnieper
river. In May, however, the Soviet forces launched a counter-offensive.
In
less than a month Kiev
was recaptured from the Poles. And in July the Red Army under the command of
Mikhail Tukhachevsky, and Alexander Yegorov reached the temporary Eastern
border of Poland.
However, the offensive on Warsaw
got bogged down. The Red Army was unable to bring the proletarian revolution
to Poland
on its bayonets. The moment Mikhail Tukhachevsky’s forces forded the Vistula
and approached the outskirts of Warsaw,
the Polish workers who had previously sympathized with the Russian
proletariat began to perceive Soviet troops as occupationist. This sparked a
powerful national movement for liberation. The Soviet-Polish war was brought
to a halt by the peace accords, signed in Riga in March 1921. Poland received the territory
of Western Ukraine and Western Byelorussia.
In
April 1920 … in Crimea General Pyotr Wrangel patched together the remnants of
Denikin’s army to create the  “Russian Army”, proclaiming
himself as the “Ruler of the Russian South”. In June his troops began their
advance towards Donbass.
The
end of the war with Poland
enabled the Soviet leadership to concentrate its principal military crack
force in the south, to rout General Wrangel – something they succeeded in
achieving in November 1920. The remnants of the ‘white’ army evacuated to Turkey.
In
their struggle with General Wrangel the Red Armymen were aided by units of
anarchists led by Nestor Makhno, who had been lured by promises of broad
autonomy by the Bolsheviks. However, when the Revolutionary Military Council
of the Southern Front demanded that Makhno reorganize his rebel detachments
into regular units and bring them within the fold of the Red Army, the latter
rejected the demand. As a result the Makhno forces were proclaimed enemies of
the Soviet republic and therefore liable for destruction – something the
Bolsheviks eventually achieved, but through tremendous exertions. The fact
is, Makhno’s detachments were regularly augmented by the peasants, those who
returned from the Civil war fronts and found themselves without any means of
livelihood, various declassified elements, criminals and such. To give them
their due, Makhno’s army possessed enviable maneuverability. It could swiftly
evade pursuit, while making pinpoint attacks at Red army detachments, militia
units and population settlements.
Yet,
at the end of August 1921 the Red Army finally succeeded in crushing Makhno.
At the head of some 50 mounted troops he fled to Romania.
In
1920 Soviet power was established in Central Asia.
The Bukhara
and Khorezm People’s Soviet republics were formed. Due to efforts of the Red
Army in the Transcaucuses, the Soviet Socialist republics of Azerbaijan, Armenia
and Georgia
were formed. Later they united for a brief spell into the Transcaucasian
Federation.
 Thus, by the end of 1920 the
Civil war in Russia
was practically over. There were only sporadic hotbeds of resistance to
soviet power on the outskirts of Russia. Thus, military action
persisted in the Far East, where the 100
thousand -strong Japanese army was dislocated: the remnants of Kolchak’s
troops and forces led by Grigory Semionov sought refuge within their fold.
Thousands of communists and their sympathizers fell victim to their terror.
Pursuing
the remnants of the ‘white’ armies, the Red Army reached Lake Baikal.
A further advance was fraught with undesirable collision with Japan. So a
decision was taken to form the Far-Eastern
Republic as a democratic state with
a multi-party parliament, which was to serve as a buffer zone between the
Russian Soviet federative Socialist Republic and Japan. In November 1922, when the
Far East was finally cleared of all vestiges of ‘white’ troops, and Japanese
invaders, the Far-Eastern republic was swallowed up by the Russian Soviet
Federative Socialist
Republic.
In
the words of historian Pyotr Deinichenko, “By 1922 Soviet power was controlling
practically the entire territory of the former Russian Empire, with the
exception of Poland, Finland and
the Baltics.
The
socialists in national republics and autonomies were well aware that without Moscow’s support Soviet
power there would constantly be under threat. So in December 1922 all Soviet
republics came out with a declaration on the formation of the Soviet Union. It comprised the Russian, Ukrainian,
Byelorussian and Transcaucasian
Socialist Soviet
Republics. Overtime,
three more equal Soviet republics emerged in Central
Asia – the Tadjik, Kirghis and Kazakh republics. While the
Transcaucasian republic broke up into Azerbaijan,
Armenia and Georgia. As a
result, by 1929 the USSR
comprised 11 republics, which formally possessed maximally broad powers,
including the right to withdraw from the union.
In turn, some union
republics comprised autonomous republics. Russia boasted the greatest
number of these latter.”
Copyright © 2006 The Voice of Russia
Originally
published at http://www.vor.ru/English/homeland/home_033.html 01/26/2006
|
