The White movement failed primarily on the fronts of the Civil War. Scientists still cannot give an unambiguous answer to the question of the reasons for the defeat of the white armies, meanwhile, it is enough to look at the balance of forces and means of the parties during the decisive operations of the Civil War, and their cardinal and growing inequality will become obvious, which did not allow whites to count on success. … In addition, the most serious reasons for White's failure were major military planning blunders and fatal underestimation of the enemy. However, the whites continued to fight and hoped for victory, which means that it is necessary to assess with an open mind whether these hopes were at least to some extent justified: could the whites have won on the Eastern Front in 1919?
It would seem that the white camp met the 1919 campaign much stronger. A huge territory of Siberia and the North Caucasus was liberated and retained from the Reds. True, the whites did not control the center of the country with the highest population density and the most developed industry, but they were preparing for an offensive that was supposed to decide the fate of Soviet Russia. In the south, General Denikin, who temporarily suppressed Cossack separatism, managed to concentrate all power in his hands, in the east - Admiral Kolchak. In the summer of 1919, Denikin even announced his subordination to Kolchak, but he did this already at a time when the Kolchak front was bursting at the seams and the Whites from the Volga region were rolling back to the Urals.
The spring offensive of Kolchak's armies began in March 1919 on the front of the Western Army, already on March 13, Ufa was taken by the Whites, and, according to some reports, Leon Trotsky himself was almost captured then. On the front of the right-flank Siberian army, Okhansk was taken on March 7, and Osa the next day. Finally, on March 18, on the left flank of the Eastern Front, a simultaneous offensive by units of the Southern Group of the Western Army and the Separate Orenburg Army began, which by the twentieth of April reached the approaches to Orenburg, but got bogged down in attempts to capture the city. On April 5, the Western army occupied Sterlitamak, on April 7 - Belebey, on April 10 - Bugulma and on April 15 - Buguruslan. The Siberian and Western armies inflicted heavy blows on the 2nd and 5th armies of the Reds. In this situation, it was important, without losing contact with the enemy, to vigorously pursue him in order to seize strategically important points before opening the rivers. However, this was not done. Although the ultimate goal of the offensive was the occupation of Moscow, the planned plan of interaction between the armies during the offensive was thwarted almost immediately, and there was no action plan beyond the Volga at all [1]. At the same time, it was assumed that the main resistance will be provided by the Reds near Simbirsk and Samara [2].
The left flank of the Siberian army slowed down the offensive on Sarapul, which was occupied only on April 10, Votkinsk was taken on April 7, Izhevsk on the 13th, and then the troops moved to Vyatka and Kotlas. Meanwhile, on April 10, from the 1st, 4th, 5th and Turkestan armies, the Southern Group of the Eastern Front of the Red Army was created under the command of M. V. Frunze, which from April 28 went over to a counteroffensive, which deprived Kolchak of the chances of victory. Already on May 4, the Reds took Buguruslan and Chistopol, on May 13 - Bugulma, on May 17 - Belebey, on May 26 - Elabuga, on June 2 - Sarapul, on the 7th - Izhevsk. On May 20, the Northern Group of the Siberian Army went over to the offensive on Vyatka, occupying Glazov on June 2, but this success was only of a private nature and did not affect the position of the front and, above all, the Western Army that had begun to retreat. On June 9, White left Ufa, on June 11 - Votkinsk, and on June 13 - Glazov, since his retention no longer made sense. Soon, the whites lost almost the entire territory that they seized during the offensive, and retreated beyond the Urals, and then were forced to retreat in harsh conditions in Siberia and Turkestan, enduring monstrous hardships to which they were doomed by the shortsightedness of their own leadership. The most important reasons for the defeat were the problems of the highest military command and control and strategic planning. It should not be forgotten that at the origins of each decision was an officer of the General Staff who possessed individual theoretical and practical experience, his own strengths and weaknesses. The most odious in the white camp in this context is the figure of the General Staff of Major General Dmitry Antonovich Lebedev, chief of staff of the Headquarters of Kolchak.
Many memoirists and researchers call Lebedev the main culprit in the failure of Kolchak's armies to attack Moscow in the spring of 1919. But in fact, hardly one person, even the most mediocre one, can be guilty of the failure of such a large-scale movement. It seems that Lebedev in the public mind became a "scapegoat" and was accused of those mistakes and failures for which he was not responsible. What is the naivety and shortsightedness of other Kolchak commanders and the Supreme Ruler himself! Ataman Dutov, for example, in an atmosphere of euphoria from the success of the spring offensive, told reporters that in August the Whites would already be in Moscow [3], but by that time they had been thrown back into Western Siberia … Once, in a conversation with General Inostrantsev, Kolchak said: “You soon you will see for yourself how poor we are in people, why we have to endure even in high positions, not excluding the posts of ministers, people who are far from corresponding to the places they occupy, but this is because there is no one to replace them”[4]. The White Eastern Front was generally unlucky with leaders. Compared to the south, there has always been a shortage of career officers and academy graduates. According to General Shchepikhin, “it is incomprehensible to the mind, it is like surprise how long-suffering our passion-bearer is an ordinary officer and soldier. We did not make any experiments with him, which, with his passive participation, were not thrown out by our “strategic boys” - Kostya (Sakharov) and Mitka (Lebedev) - and the cup of patience was still not overflowing”[5].
There were very few truly talented and experienced military leaders and staff officers among the Whites on the Eastern Front. The brightest names can be counted literally on the fingers: Generals V. G. Boldyrev, V. O. Kappel, S. N. Akulinin, V. M. Molchanov. Here is, perhaps, the entire list of those who could immediately be attributed to talented military leaders of the highest echelon. But even these more than modest human resources were used by the white command extremely irrationally. For example, the coming to power of Kolchak deprived the Whites of such a talented military leader as the former commander-in-chief of the General Staff, Lieutenant General Boldyrev. It was about him that the Soviet commander-in-chief II Vatsetis wrote in his memoirs: “With the advent of gene. Boldyrev on the horizon of Siberia, we had to be considered separately”[6]. Dieterichs was actually removed from military issues for a long time, and for the entire first half of 1919, on behalf of Admiral Kolchak, he was investigating the murder of the royal family, which could well have been entrusted to a civilian official. From January to early May 1919, Kappel also did not participate in combat operations, being engaged in the formation of his corps in the rear. The commanders of all three of Kolchak's main armies were selected extremely poorly. At the head of the Siberian army was put the 28-year-old poorly controlled adventurer R. Gaida with the outlook of an Austrian paramedic, who more than others contributed to the disruption of the spring offensive. The Western army was headed by General MV Khanzhin, an experienced officer, but an artilleryman by profession, despite the fact that the army commander had to solve by no means narrowly technical issues of artillery work. The commander of the Separate Orenburg Army, Ataman A. I. Dutov was more of a politician than a commander, therefore, for a significant part of the time in the first half of 1919, he was replaced by Chief of Staff, General A. N. Vagin. Almost exclusively Cossacks by origin were promoted to other leading positions in the Cossack units, sometimes despite the professional suitability of the candidate. Admiral Kolchak himself was a naval man and was poorly versed in land tactics and strategy, as a result of which he was forced to rely on his own headquarters, headed by Lebedev, in his decisions.
However, no matter how talented the military leaders may have, they cannot do anything without troops. And Kolchak had no troops. At least compared to the red ones. The laws of military art are immutable and speak of the need for at least threefold superiority over the enemy for a successful offensive. If this condition is not met and there are no reserves for the development of success, the operation will only lead to unnecessary death of people, which happened in the spring and summer of 1919. By the beginning of the offensive, the whites had only a double superiority in forces, and taking into account the non-combatants, and not only the combat strength. The actual ratio, most likely, was even less advantageous for them. By April 15, the Western army, which was delivering the main blow, had only 2,686 officers, 36,863 bayonets, 9,242 sabers, 12,547 people in teams and 4,337 gunners - a total of 63,039 officers and lower ranks [7]. By June 23, the Siberian Army had 56,649 bayonets and 3980 sabers, a total of 60,629 fighters [8]. In the Separate Orenburg Army by March 29, there were only 3185 bayonets and 8443 checkers, a total of 11 628 soldiers [9]. The latter numbered almost six times fewer troops in its ranks (including by transferring all of the most combat-worthy non-Cossack units to the Western Army) than its neighbors, whose command also allowed themselves systematic mockery of the Orenburg people. The size of the Separate Ural Army, according to the reconnaissance of the Reds, in the summer was about 13,700 bayonets and checkers. In total, at least 135 thousand soldiers and officers of the Kolchak armies took part in the spring offensive (excluding the Urals, who acted virtually autonomously).
When the Bolshevik leadership drew attention to the threat from the east, reinforcements were sent to the front, equalizing the balance of forces by early May. The Whites, however, had nothing to reinforce their exhausted units, and their offensive quickly fizzled out. It is no coincidence that Pepelyaev, who commanded the Northern Group of the Siberian Army during the offensive, on June 21, 1919, wrote to his chief Gaide: “The headquarters frivolously let tens of thousands of people go to slaughter” [10]. Glaring mistakes and disorganization in command and control were obvious even to ordinary officers and soldiers and undermined their faith in the command [11]. This is not surprising, given that not even all the corps headquarters knew about the plan of the upcoming offensive. In addition to an unprepared army, the command did not have a well-thought-out plan of operation, and strategic planning itself was at an infant level. What is the farce of a conference of the commanders of the armies, their chiefs of staff and Admiral Kolchak on February 11, 1919 in Chelyabinsk, when the fundamental question of an offensive was being decided! Lebedev, who did not come to the meeting, had long ago adopted his own plan, which the admiral had to force to accept all the army commanders, who had their own plans of action and were guided by them without proper coordination with neighbors [12]. When failures began on the front of the Western Army, Gaida, instead of providing immediate support, openly rejoiced at the failure of his neighbor on the left [13]. Very soon, the Reds transferred part of the troops that had been released during the defeat of Khanzhin's army against Gaida, who repeated the sad fate of the ridiculed one. The question of the direction of White's main blow is still not completely clear. In the spring of 1919, it could be applied in two directions: 1) Kazan - Vyatka - Kotlas to join the troops of the Northern Front of General E. K. Miller and the allies and 2) Samara (Saratov) - Tsaritsyn to join Denikin's troops. The concentration of significant forces in the Western Army and operational correspondence [14], as well as the simplest logic, testify in favor of the main attack in the center of the front - along the line of the Samara-Zlatoust railway in the most promising Ufa direction, which made it possible to connect with Denikin by the shortest route [15] …
However, it was not possible to concentrate all forces in the Western Army and coordinate the offensive with neighboring army formations [16]. The right-flank Siberian army was almost as powerful in its composition as the Western, and its actions were largely associated with the northern direction of the offensive against Arkhangelsk. A supporter of this path was the army commander himself, who did not hide his views on this matter even from civilians [17]. White commanders recalled that it was always possible to take one or two divisions from the Siberian army [18], and Gaida's attempts, instead of supporting his neighbor on the left, by strikes on Sarapul and Kazan, to act independently in the northern direction were a serious strategic mistake that affected the outcome of the operation. The Soviet commander-in-chief Vatsetis also drew attention to this mistake of the enemy in his unpublished memoirs [19]. It is no coincidence that on February 14, before the start of the offensive, Denikin wrote to Kolchak: “It's a pity that the main forces of the Siberian troops, apparently, are directed to the north. A joint operation on Saratov would give enormous advantages: the liberation of the Ural and Orenburg regions, the isolation of Astrakhan and Turkestan. And the main thing is the possibility of direct, direct communication between the East and the South, which would lead to the complete unification of all healthy forces of Russia and to state work on an all-Russian scale”[20]. White strategists described in detail the advantages of the southern option, noting the importance of creating a common front with Denikin, the liberation of the Cossack regions and other territories with an anti-Bolshevik population (German colonists, Volga peasants), the seizure of grain regions and areas of coal and oil production, as well as the Volga, which allowed transport these resources [21]. Of course, this inevitably stretched Kolchak's communications, which, before joining with Denikin, could lead to failure, but the army entered a more developed area with a denser railway network, and besides, the front was reduced and reserves were freed up. However, the matter did not come to coordination with the south, since the offensive of the two white fronts developed in antiphase. Denikin's major successes began after the Kolchak offensive had been drowned out.
Vatsetis recalled: “The subject of action for all counter-revolutionary fronts was Moscow, where they all rushed in different ways. Did Kolchak, Denikin, Miller have a general plan of action? Hardly. We know that the draft general plan was put forward by Denikin and Kolchak, but it was not carried out by either one or the other, each acted in his own way”[22]. If we talk about the choice between the “northern” and “southern” options, then the statement of the General Staff of Lieutenant-General D. V. Filatyev, who later served at Kolchak's Headquarters, is closest to reality: “There was one more, third option, except for the two indicated: move simultaneously to Vyatka and Samara. It led to an eccentric movement of the armies, action in disarray and to the denudation of the front in the gap between the armies. Such a course of action could be afforded by a commander who is confident in himself and in his troops and has a superiority of forces, a strategic reserve and a widely developed network of railways for the transfer of troops along the front and in depth. In this case, one of the directions is chosen as the main one, and the others are the essence of the demonstration to mislead the enemy. None of the listed conditions were present in the Siberian army, excluding the confidence of the commander, so this option had to be discarded without discussion, as leading inexorably to complete failure. Meanwhile, it was he who was chosen to crush the Bolsheviks, which led the Siberian armies in the end to collapse. The position of the Bolsheviks in the spring of 1919 was such that only a miracle could save them. It happened in the form of the adoption in Siberia of the most absurd plan for action”[23]. In fact, due to the erroneous decision of the Headquarters, the white offensive, already poorly prepared and few in number, turned into a blow with spread fingers. Not only did they fail to coordinate with Denikin, but even to effectively cooperate between the Kolchak armies themselves. Even in the early days of the offensive, Headquarters Khanzhin drew attention to this, which telegraphed on March 2 to Omsk: even sacrificing the private interests of these armies in favor of the main attack … The Siberian army drew up its own plan of action and yesterday proceeded to its implementation without taking the starting position indicated to it - until now the left-flank section of this army from the Sarapul-Krasnoufimsk railway to the demarcation line with the Western Army is not occupied by the troops of the Siberian army, and I must cover this gap in the front with one and a half regiments of my Ufa corps, diverting these forces for an indefinite time from the task assigned to the corps. The Orenburg army is in the same state of complete decomposition of the Cossack units as it was at Orenburg; decomposition threatens to go over to the infantry units attached to this army … It is clear that such an army not only will not fulfill the task assigned to it by the general directive of the Headquarters, it is not only incapable [of] an offensive, but it does not even have the strength to hold the front and stop the spontaneous withdrawal and exposure of the flank and rear of the shock army … "[24]
The chief of staff of Khanzhin, General Schepikhin, wrote about the Orenburg army that "in essence, Dutov with his pseudo-army is a soap bubble and the left flank of the Western army is in the air" [25]. But was the position in the Western army itself much better, where Shchepikhin served? In fact, this army, despite the gathering of all sorts of reinforcements into it, experienced problems common to all three white armies. On August 4, 1919, Assistant Chief of Staff of the General Staff Headquarters, Lieutenant General A. P. Budberg wrote in his diary: “Now our situation is much worse than a year ago, because we have already liquidated our army, a vinaigrette of Red Army rags, the regular Red Army is advancing, not wanting - despite all the reports of our intelligence - to fall apart; on the contrary, it drives us to the east, but we have lost the ability to resist and roll and roll almost without a fight”[26]. The composition of Kolchak's troops left much to be desired. The situation was disastrous not only with the highest command personnel and military talents. There was an acute shortage of officers at the middle and junior levels. Cadre officers were generally rare. In the 63,000-strong Western Army, by mid-April there were only 138 regular officers and 2548 wartime officers [27]. According to some reports, by the beginning of 1919, the shortage of officers at Kolchak reached 10 thousand people [28]. The rear, on the other hand, was full of officers. The harsh treatment of former officers who had previously served with the Reds and who were captured by the White did not help to correct the situation. 1917 disintegrated both soldier and officer. During the Civil War, disrespect towards elders began to appear among officers, card games and other entertainments, drunkenness (possibly due to despair) and even looting became widespread. For example, in the order on the Eastern Front No. 85 dated September 8, 1919, it was stated that the commander of the 6th Orenburg Cossack regiment, military sergeant major A. A. Izbyshev "for evading combat operations and continuous drunkenness" was demoted to the rank and file [29].
In the White East, there was practically not a single division chief, corps commander, army commander (for example, Gaida, Pepeliaev, Dutov), not to mention atamans who would not commit disciplinary offenses under the conditions of the Civil War. Senior bosses set a bad example for everyone else. There was no absolute meaning of the order. In fact, any significant military commander in the new conditions was a kind of ataman. The interests of their unit, detachment, division, corps, army, troops were placed above orders from above, which were carried out only as necessary. Such a "chieftain" for his subordinates was both the king and the god. For him, they were ready to go anywhere. As a contemporary noted, “in the conditions of the Civil War, there is no“stability of parts”, and everything is based only on“the stability of individual leaders”[30]. Military discipline, as well as interaction, were absent as such. The Reds had discipline in a completely different way. While blaming the revolution and the Civil War on the Bolsheviks, we must not forget that the losing side is no less, and perhaps even more, responsible for all the consequences of this. The complete disorganization of their own military command and the impressive successes of the enemy led to the loss of faith in victory in the ranks of the whites. Disappointment can be traced most clearly in the statements of the command staff. Major General LN Domozhirov, who was at the disposal of the military headquarters of the Orenburg Cossack army, speaking in the spring of 1919 at the stanitsa gathering in the village of Kizilskaya, spoke to the Cossacks about the aimlessness of fighting the Reds [31]. “I feel that my faith in the success of our holy cause is undermined,” [32], General RK Bangersky noted in early May. The commander of the II Orenburg Cossack Corps of the General Staff, Major General I. G. Akulinin, in his report to the army commander on April 25, directly wrote about the absence of "a particularly cordial attitude on the part of the" native stanitsa "to the Cossack units" [33]. On May 2, when Kolchak's defeat was not yet obvious, the commander Khanzhin imposed a resolution on one of the documents: “Our cavalry must follow the example of the Red Army cavalry” [34].
Such confessions of generals are expensive. The Kolchak army suffered from an incorrect distribution of forces and equipment along the front: it experienced an acute shortage of infantry units on the Cossack fronts (which, for example, made it impossible to take such an important center as Orenburg by the forces of cavalry alone) and, at the same time, a lack of cavalry on non-Cossack fronts. Only centralized control could lead the Whites to victory, but the Cossack regions remained autonomous, and the Cossack chieftains continued to pursue their own political line. In addition to tactical and strategic problems, this also added moral and psychological inconveniences. Soldiers and Cossacks, fighting in their native lands, felt a strong temptation at the first opportunity to disperse to their homes or go to the enemy if their native village or village was behind the front line (by the way, the Bolsheviks understood this and tried to prevent this from happening). After the liberation from the Red Izhevsk and Votkinsk factories, even the legendary Izhevsk and Votkinsk residents wanted to go home - the only white part of the workers of their kind. During the period of the most difficult battles at the end of April, when the fate of the White Cause in the east was being decided, most of these “heroes” of the struggle against the Bolsheviks simply went home (I must say that Khanzhin himself had unwisely promised them “to return to their families” earlier). By May, only 452 bayonets from the previous composition remained in the Izhevsk brigade, the newly arrived reinforcements turned out to be poorly trained and surrendered [35]. On May 10, Gaida had to dismiss the soldiers of the Votkinsk division to their homes [36]. The Cossacks generally did not want to go beyond their territory, putting local interests above. As practice has shown, the Cossacks could only allocate part of their forces for the nationwide struggle against the Reds, and also provide their territory as a base for the White movement. Before the creation of the massive Red Army, such a feature of the Cossacks gave whites an undeniable advantage over the enemy. However, the lack of an effective repressive apparatus in the Whites did not allow the leaders of the White movement to quickly form massive armies (with the help of terror) and ultimately doomed them to defeat. The forces mobilized by Kolchak were heterogeneous in composition. In many respects, Vatsetis's assessment is fair: “Kolchak's front turned out to be rather heterogeneous, both in its political orientation and in the line of social grouping. The right flank is the army of General. Gaidy consisted mainly of Siberian democracy, supporters of Siberian autonomy. The center, the Ufa Front, consisted of kulak-capitalist elements and adhered to the Great Russian-Cossack direction along the political line.
The left flank - the Cossacks of the Orenburg and Ural regions declared themselves constitutionalists. This was the case at the front. As for the rear from the Urals to Baikal, the remnants of the left wing of the former Czecho-Russian military bloc were grouped there: the Czecho-troops and Socialist-Revolutionaries, who opened hostile actions against the dictatorship of the Supreme Rule of Admiral Kolchak”[37]. Of course, with such a heterogeneous composition, the morale of Kolchak's troops left much to be desired. Shchepikhin, Pepelyaev and others noted the indifference of the population to the cause of the revival of Russia, which also influenced the morale of the troops. According to Pepelyaev, “the moment has come when you don’t know what will happen tomorrow, whether the units will surrender as a whole. There must be some kind of turning point, a new outburst of patriotism, without which we will all perish”[38]. But the miracle did not happen. The morale of the troops also depends on whether there are reserves available to change units on the front line and give the soldiers rest; It also depends on how the soldier is dressed, shod, fed and provided with everything necessary. The problem of having reserves was one of the most painful for whites. In fact, Kolchak's offensive, as well as Denikin's, began and developed with an almost complete absence of any reserves, which could not but lead to a catastrophe. The calculations of the white strategists were based, apparently, on the gradual tightening of the ring around Soviet Russia and the reduction of its own front line due to this. At the same time, new territories were liberated in which it was possible to mobilize reinforcements, and their own troops were released. However, to begin with, it was necessary at least to reach the Volga line and gain a foothold on it, which the Kolchak people did not manage to do. The operation began on the eve of the spring thaw, and very soon small numbers of whites were cut off from their rear for several weeks (this happened both in the Western and in the Separate Orenburg armies), which had not been established before, and now were completely absent. Frunze rightly believed that the thaw would have to become an ally of the Reds [39].
Indeed, as a result of the flooding of rivers, not only artillery and carts could not move forward, but even the infantry, which at first had to use “matinees” (morning frosts), and with warming there were cases when riders drowned along with horses. Parts of the corps, due to the flooding of rivers, were separated, could not act in a coordinated manner, and lost contact with each other. If the Reds retreated to their base, where they could quickly recover, then the White troops, rushing at full steam to the Volga in order to get ahead of the muddy roads, at the most crucial moment were deprived of food, clothing, ammunition, artillery and were severely overworked. This situation, for example, developed in April 1919 in the Western Army [40]. General NT Sukin asked the command about what to do - to continue the offensive on Buzuluk and sacrifice the infantry, or wait out the muddy roads, pull up the transports and artillery and put the troops in order [41]. According to Sukin, "to go … to the Volga with weak forces, weak, thinned parts - this is tantamount to the failure of the whole case" [42]. In reality, the case failed long before reaching the Volga. It was not possible to get ahead of the onset of the thaw, and the whites got bogged down. A stop in the conditions of a maneuverable Civil War was almost always a harbinger of retreat and defeat. "A stop is death in a civil war," [43] wrote General Schepikhin. The Reds, taking advantage of the temporary respite, pulled up their reserves, took the initiative into their own hands, transferred reinforcements to the threatened areas and thereby did not allow the White to achieve a decisive victory anywhere. White didn’t get the reserves he needed so much. It was the thaw that allowed the Reds to recover and inflict a counterattack from the Buzuluk-Sorochinskaya-Mikhailovskoe (Sharlyk) area with the forces of the Southern Group of the Eastern Front. The prepared blow of the Reds, although it became known in advance [44], there was nothing to fend off (a similar situation occurred in the fall of 1919 with Denikin).
The Whites could not even reach Buzuluk, which was ordered to take before April 26 and intercept the Tashkent railway in order to block the connection between Orenburg and the Soviet center. Due to the lack of accurate intelligence, it was not clear where to move the Southern Group of the Western Army - with a fist to Orenburg or Buzuluk, or to keep it between these points [45]. As a result, the third, failed option was chosen. Pepeliaev wrote about the Siberian army: “The regiments are melting and there is nothing to replenish them with … We have to mobilize the population of the occupied areas, act independently of any general state plan, risking getting the nickname“chieftain”for their work. We have to create improvised personnel units, weakening combat units”[46]. Shchepikhin noted that there were no reserves behind the front of the Western Army: "… further east to Omsk, even at a rolling ball, - not a single regiment and there is little chance of getting anything in the coming months" [47]. Meanwhile, the offensive had exhausted the units. In one of the best regiments of the 5th Sterlitamak Army Corps, Beloretsk, up to 200 bayonets remained by the beginning of May [48]. By mid-April, the regiments of the 6th Ural Corps numbered 400–800 bayonets, half of which could not operate due to the lack of boots, some wore bast shoes, and there were no clothes even for replenishment [49]. The situation was even worse among the Ural Cossacks, whose regiments numbered 200 people, there was an elective beginning and extremely weak discipline [50]. Budberg already noted in his diary on May 2 that the White's offensive had failed, and the front had been broken through by the Reds in a very dangerous place: “I consider the situation very alarming; it is clear to me that the troops were exhausted and disheveled during the continuous offensive - flight to the Volga, lost their stability and ability to stubborn resistance (generally very weak in improvised troops) … The transition of the Reds to active operations is very unpleasant, since the Headquarters has no ready and combat-ready reserves …
The Headquarters has no action plan; flew to the Volga, waiting for the occupation of Kazan, Samara and Tsaritsyn, but they did not think about what would have to be done in case of other prospects … There were no Reds - they were chasing them; the red ones appeared - we begin to dismiss them as from an annoying fly, just like they were dismissing the Germans in 1914-1917 … they are incapable of fighting and pursuing, they are incapable of maneuvering … The harsh conditions of the Civil War make the troops sensitive to detours and encirclement, for behind this there are torment and shameful death from red beasts. The Reds are also illiterate in the military; their plans are very naive and immediately visible … But they have plans, and we have none … "[51] The transfer of the strategic reserve of the Headquarters - the 1st Volga Corps of Kappel - to the Western Army and its introduction into battle in parts turned out to be a serious miscalculation of the command … As part of the Separate Orenburg Army, Kappel's corps could have changed the situation [52], but at the decisive moment Dutov's army turned out to be left to its own fate by the actions of the Headquarters. At the same time, Kappel's corps was sent to the front in its raw form, partially passed to the enemy (in particular, the 10th Bugulma regiment moved almost in full strength, there were cases of transitions in other regiments), and the rest was used to plug holes in the front of the Western Army alone. According to the British military mission, about 10 thousand people passed from Kappel's corps to the Reds [53], although this figure seems to be greatly overestimated. Another reserve - the Consolidated Cossack Corps - also did not play a large role in the operation. As part of the Siberian Army, the Combined Shock Siberian Corps, which had been formed from February – March 1919, was in reserve as a reserve. The corps was brought into battle on May 27 to cover the gap between the Western and Siberian armies, but literally in two days of hostilities it lost half of its strength, primarily due to those who surrendered, and did not show itself in further battles. The reasons for the failure of the corps are both obvious and incredible: the troops were sent into battle without putting together and proper training, the majority of regimental, battalion and company commanders received their assignments only on the eve or during the advancement of the corps to the front, and the chiefs of divisions even after the defeat of the corps. The compound was sent to the front line without telephones, field kitchens, convoy, and not even fully armed [54]. There were no other large reserves in Gaida's army.
Why, then, did not even such modest replenishment provide the White with everything necessary? The fact is that the issues of material support have become the bottleneck of the Kolchak military machine. The only Trans-Siberian railway passed through the whole of Siberia, the fate of the offensive largely depended on its throughput. It must be said that the railway in 1919 worked extremely poorly and the supply was extremely irregular. As a result, the troops had to carry everything they needed with them, and in extreme cases, switch to self-supply, bordering on looting, embittered the local population and corrupted the troops. It was especially difficult in those areas where there was no railroad and it was necessary to provide transportation by horse-drawn transport. This concerned the entire left flank of White.
Note that the "psychic" attacks of White without a single shot, famous from the film "Chapaev", were undertaken not at all from a good life and not only to impress the enemy. One of the main reasons for such actions was the lack of white ammunition, which had little to do with psychology. General PA Belov wrote to Khanzhin: “The main reason for the decay of the spirit of my units, in the general opinion of the commanders, is that they have not been supplied with cartridges for a long time. Now there are thirty to forty cartridges left in parts for a rifle and in my stock for the whole group there are ten thousand”[55]. In March 1919, only two clips of cartridges were issued to the Izhevsk residents defending Ufa [56]. Leaving the Volga region in the fall of 1918, the whites lost their military factories and warehouses (Kazan - gunpowder and artillery depots; Simbirsk - two cartridge factories; Ivashchenkovo - an explosives factory, a capsule factory, artillery warehouses, reserves of explosives for 2 million shells; Samara - pipe factory, gunpowder factory, workshops) [57]. In the Urals, there were military factories in Izhevsk and Zlatoust, but in Siberia there were no arms factories at all. The Whites were armed with weapons of a wide variety of systems - rifles of the Mosin, Berdan, Arisak, Gra, Waterly, machine guns of Maxim, Colt, Hotchkiss, Lewis [58]. Rifles of foreign systems were sometimes no less common than the Russians. This diversity made it difficult to provide the army with appropriate ammunition. So, in the Western army there were no Russian rifles, and there were no cartridges for the Japanese ones [59]. The situation was no better with machine guns and guns. By April 15, the Western Army had 229 Maxim machine guns, 137 Lewis machine guns, 249 Colt machine guns, 52 other systems, 667 in total. 44 batteries had 85 three-inch guns, two 42-line guns, eight - 48 linear, seven - other systems and one bomb [60]. The Separate Orenburg Army lacked guns and machine guns.
In all armies, there was a shortage of communications equipment, cars, armored vehicles. Due to poor communications, for example, the coordinated offensive of the White Corps to Orenburg in early May was effectively disrupted. As of May 28, up to 300 military telegrams could not pass to Orsk (the headquarters of the disbanded Separate Orenburg Army) from Ufa (the headquarters of the Western Army) [61]. The reasons were not only imperfection and lack of technology, but also in frequent sabotage when it was impossible to put things in order in the rear. The army did not have enough gasoline. Pilots of the Western Army in the midst of the spring offensive of 1919 were instructed to "retain a small amount of gasoline available [in] the squadrons … for aerial work when crossing the Volga" [62]. And what is the appearance of a simple Kolchak soldier! Some of the few photographs show a terrifying picture. Even worse is what is known from the documents. In the units of the Northern Group of the Siberian Army “people are barefoot and naked, they walk in army jackets and bast shoes … Horse scouts, like the Scythians of the twentieth century, ride without saddles” [63]. In the 5th Syzran Rifle Regiment of the Southern Group of the Western Army, "the majority of shoes were falling apart, they walked knee-deep in mud" [64]. In the 2nd Ufa Army Corps of the Western Army, reinforcements arrived without uniforms directly from the military commanders and were sent into battle [65]. Orenburg Cossacks instead of greatcoats wore Chinese wadded jackets, from which, when it got warmer, many fighters pulled out cotton wool [66], and after an unexpected cold weather began to freeze and get sick. “You had to see with your own eyes in order to believe what the army was wearing … Most in torn sheepskin coats, sometimes dressed directly on almost a naked body; on their feet are holey felt boots, which were only an unnecessary burden during the spring thaw and mud … Complete lack of linen”[67]. In May, Kolchak, who arrived at the front line, “expressed a desire to see units of the 6th Ural Corps … he was shown the units of the 12th Ural Division being withdrawn to the rear. They looked terrible. Some without shoes, some in outerwear on a naked body, most without overcoats. They went off perfectly in a ceremonial march. The supreme ruler was terribly upset by the sight …”[68].
This picture does not fit with the data on the multimillion-dollar supplies of the allies to Kolchak, including about two million pairs of shoes and full uniforms for 360 thousand people [69], not to mention hundreds of thousands of shells, rifles, hundreds of millions of cartridges, thousands of machine guns. If all this was delivered to Vladivostok, it never reached the front. Hunger, fatigue from continuous marches and battles, lack of normal clothing created fertile ground for Bolshevik agitation, and more often, in addition to it, led to unrest in the troops, killings of officers, and desertions to the side of the enemy. The mobilized peasants fought reluctantly, fled quickly, went over to the enemy, taking their weapons with them and opening fire on their recent comrades. There have been cases of mass surrender. The most famous was the riot in the 1st Ukrainian kuren named after Taras Shevchenko on May 1-2, during which about 60 officers were killed, and up to 3,000 armed soldiers with 11 machine guns and 2 guns went over to the side of the Reds [70]. Later, the 11th Sengileevsky regiment, the 3rd battalion of the 49th Kazan regiment and other units went over to the enemy's side [71]. Similar, but smaller in scale cases took place in the Southern Group of the Western Army, the Siberian and the Separate Orenburg armies. In June 1919, two battalions of the 21st Chelyabinsk mountain rifle regiment crossed over to the Reds, having killed the officers, and at the end of the month near Perm the 3rd Dobriansky and 4th Solikamsk regiments surrendered without a fight [72]. In total, during the counteroffensive, before the end of the Ufa operation, about 25,500 people were taken prisoner by the Reds [73]. With the inability of the command to create elementary conditions for the troops, the result of the Kolchak offensive is not surprising. The chief of the 12th Ural Rifle Division of the General Staff, Major General RK Bangersky, reported to the corps commander Sukin on May 2: “We never had a rear. Since the time of Ufa (we are talking about the capture of the city on March 13 - A. G.) we have not received bread, but we have eaten whatever we have. The division is now incapable of combat. You need to give people at least two nights to sleep and come to their senses, otherwise there will be a big collapse”[74].
At the same time, Bangersky noted that he did not see in the old army such heroism as was shown by the whites during the Ufa and Sterlitamak operations, but there is a limit to everything. "I would like to know in the name of what higher considerations the 12th division was sacrificed?" [75] - asked the major general. But it was donated not only by the Bangersky division, but by the entire Kolchak army. The Orenburg Cossacks as part of the Western army did not have fodder, the horses suffered from lack of food, constant transitions and could hardly move at a walk [76]. Such a deplorable state of the horse train deprived him of an important advantage - speed and surprise. The white cavalry, according to the testimony of the participant in the battles, could not be compared with the red cavalry, whose horses were in excellent condition and, as a result, had high mobility. The commander of the 6th Ural Army Corps, Sukin, wrote to Khanzhin on May 3: “Continuous marches on incredibly difficult roads, without days and daily battles of the last two weeks without rest, without carts, hunger, lack of uniforms (many people are literally barefoot … without greatcoats) - that's the reasons that can finally destroy the young cadres of the divisions, people stagger from fatigue and from sleepless nights and their combat resilience is finally broken. I ask you to take the divisions to the reserve to put them in order”[77]. It was General Sukin, driven to despair by the situation, who did not hesitate to put up a guard of honor in front of those who arrived in Ufa shortly after Kolchak took it by Kolchak [78]. Sukin wrote in despair: "There is not even bread" [79].
Pepeliaev noted that "the area of military operations has been eaten away to the ground, the rear is endlessly rich, but the transport is such that it is impossible to fight with it, in its present position" [80]. According to General Bangersky, “the capture of Ufa made it possible to form a solid rear, to replenish the troops with mobilized ones, to supply a wagon train and now, at the beginning of May, start an offensive with large forces, pulling up Kappel's corps and forming more new troops” [81]. But this was not done … The crown of the monstrous state of the Kolchak military machine was the rear, which was very weakly controlled by the Whites. Captain G. Dumbadze, who was sent to Krasnoyarsk, one of the major centers of Siberia, after completing the accelerated course of the General Staff Academy, recalled: “Arriving in Krasnoyarsk, I first saw the fiery flame of partisanship that engulfed the entire province. Walking the streets of Krasnoyarsk was associated with great risks. Gangs of Reds and individual Bolsheviks, disguised as government soldiers, killed officers using the cover of the night. No one was sure who stopped him to check his documents: a real legal patrol or masked red terrorists. Burning of warehouses and shops, cutting of telephone wires and many other types of sabotage occurred literally every day. The lights in the houses were not turned on or the windows were covered with dark matter, otherwise a hand grenade was thrown into the light into the apartments. I remember having to walk the streets at night with a loaded Browning in my pocket. All this was literally in the heart of White Siberia”[82]. The entire Yenisei province and part of Irkutsk were covered by the partisan movement, which chained significant forces of the whites to itself. In May 1919, partisans systematically and daily dismantled the tracks (sometimes at a considerable distance), which led to long disruptions to train traffic on the Trans-Siberian (for example, on the night of May 8, as a result of sabotage, the railway communication was interrupted for two weeks), burned bridges, fired trains, cut telegraph wires, terrorized railroad workers. For every 10 days by the beginning of June, there were 11 crashes, east of Krasnoyarsk, as a result, more than 140 trains with ammunition and supplies accumulated, which would not have been superfluous at the front [83].
Dumbadze wrote: “There is no exact measure for determining the terrible moral, political and material damage caused to us by the partisans. I will always be in my opinion that the affairs in the Yenisei province were stabbed in the back of the Siberian army. Soviet General Ogorodnikov … says that the Whites lost in Siberia without any strategic defeats from the Red Army [84], and the reason for their death was in the riots in the rear. Having experience in this armed rear, I cannot but agree with what Ogorodnikov says”[85]. The uprisings engulfed the districts of the Turgai and Akmola regions, the Altai and Tomsk provinces. Thousands of soldiers were used to suppress them, who, under other circumstances, could have been sent to the front. In addition, the very participation of tens of thousands of combat-ready men in the partisan movement clearly testified to the failure of Kolchak's mobilization in Siberia. We add that due to the atamanism, the front did not receive reinforcements from the Far East, which, perhaps, could turn the tide. An analysis of the internal state of Kolchak's armies clearly shows the complete impossibility of successfully implementing the plans of the white command. The Reds, who successfully launched the flywheel of mass mobilization, had an almost constant superiority in forces and means. During 1919, the average monthly increase in the number of the Red Army amounted to 183 thousand people [86], which exceeded the total number of troops available to the Whites on the Eastern Front. By April 1, when the whites were still hoping for success, the Red Army already had one and a half million fighters, and their number was constantly increasing. The number of troops of all opponents of the Reds, taken together, could not be compared with this figure. At the same time, the advantage in the quality of personnel that the whites had before the creation of the mass Red Army was quickly lost. The number of the Red troops, and in many cases their quality, increased rapidly; the quality of the white troops, with relatively little change in numbers, was constantly falling. In addition, the central position of the Reds allowed them not only to take advantage of the reserves of the old army and the resources of the industrial center, but also to act along internal lines of operation, crushing the enemy one by one. White, on the other hand, acted separately, attempts to coordinate their actions were belated. Due to the vastness of the theater of war, they could not take advantage of the advantages they had, for example, the presence of trained Cossack cavalry.
The mistakes of some Kolchak generals, who made a dizzying career during the Civil War, but did not have time to acquire the necessary experience, also had an effect. The mobilization resource of the white-controlled areas was not fully used, a huge mass of peasants joined the rebels in the white rear or simply evaded mobilization. There were no prepared reserves. The army did not have an equipped rear base and a military industry, and supplies were irregular. The consequence was a constant shortage of weapons and ammunition, communications and equipment in the troops. The Whites could not oppose anything to the most powerful Bolshevik agitation in their troops. The rank and file had a rather low level of political consciousness and were tired of the long-term war. There was no unity in the Kolchak camp due to sharp internal contradictions, and not only on political issues between the monarchists, cadets and Socialist-Revolutionaries. On the outskirts, controlled by whites, the national question was acute. Historically, there were difficult relations between the Cossack and non-Cossack population, the Russian population with the Bashkir and Kazakh. The white leadership pursued a rather soft political course, and harsh measures often could not be implemented due to the lack of mechanisms for implementing orders on the ground and monitoring their execution. Despite the brutal Red Terror, the persecution of the church, which embittered the peasants with land policy, the whites could not become the force that would bring order and become attractive to the broad masses. With the end of the First World War, the Bolsheviks lost the appearance of traitors, which they entrenched after the Brest Peace. Whites, on the other hand, now found themselves in the role of accomplices of the interventionists. The leaders of the White movement, unlike their adversary, did not understand the complexity of the task before them, did not realize the need for the most severe measures to achieve victory.
No matter how much they talk about the white terror, it is obvious that the white leaders - people born of the old regime - could not imagine the scale of violence that was necessary in 1917-1922 for the successful implementation of their plans. The Bolsheviks, hardened by years of illegal struggle, had such an idea. However, their methods of influence were not limited to terror alone, constituting a cruel, but at the same time effective management system. The Bolshevik leaders were able to comprehend the principles of waging war in the new conditions, combining war and politics, about which Clausewitz wrote and what the whites did not succeed in. It was the creation of a massive Red Army under the leadership of qualified officers of the old army, controlled by commissars, as well as the advancement of slogans that were understandable and attractive to most, that brought victory to the Bolsheviks. White had his own advantages, but he could not take advantage of them effectively. As a result, the red organization defeated the white improvisation.
