Troubles. 1919 year. The White High Command had two plans to get out of the disaster. The Minister of War, General Budberg, reasonably noted that the bloodless, demoralized units were no longer capable of attacking. He proposed to create a long-term defense on the borders of Tobol and Ishim. Gain time, wait for winter. The commander-in-chief, General Dieterichs, proposed to gather the last forces and attack. The Red Army was continuously advancing from the Volga to Tobol and had to run out of steam.
General situation on the Eastern Front. The defeat of the Kolchakites in the southern direction
In the second half of 1919, Kolchak's army suffered heavy defeats and ceased to be a threat to the Soviet Republic. The main threat to Moscow was Denikin's army, which was successfully advancing on the southern front. In these conditions, it was necessary to finish off the Kolchakites in order to transfer troops from the east of the country to the south.
In connection with the dismemberment of Kolchak's armies, which were retreating in diverging directions, the main command of the Red Army reorganized the armies of the Eastern Front. The Southern Army Group (1st and 4th armies) was withdrawn from its structure, which formed the Turkestan Front on August 14, 1919. Until October 1919, the Turkestan Front also included units of the 11th Army operating in the Astrakhan region. The new front was headed by Frunze. The Turkestan front received the task of finishing off Kolchak's southern army, the Orenburg and Ural White Cossacks. The troops of the Turkestan Front successfully coped with this task. In September, in the region of Orsk and Aktyubinsk, Kolchak's southern army and the Orenburg Cossacks Dutov and Bakich were defeated
The remaining parts of the Orenburg army in November - December 1919 retreated from the Kokchetav region to Semirechye. This crossing was called the "Hungry Campaign" - from the Hungry Steppe (waterless desert on the left bank of the Syr Darya). About 20 thousand Cossacks and members of their families retreated in an almost deserted area, lack of food and water. As a result, half of the Cossacks and refugees died from hunger, cold and disease. Almost all of the survivors were sick with typhus. The Dutovites joined the Semirechensk army of Ataman Annenkov. Dutov was appointed ataman Annenkov governor-general of the Semirechensk region. General Bakich led the Orenburg detachment. In the spring of 1920, the remnants of the White Cossacks, under the onslaught of the Reds, fled to China.
In the Urals direction, the battles went on with varying success. After the Reds unblocked Uralsk and took Lbischensk, the White Cossacks retreated further down the river. Ural. However, the red group under the command of Chapaev broke away from its rear, the supply lines were greatly stretched, the Red Army men were tired of battles and transitions. As a result, the command of the white Ural army was able to organize in late August - early September 1919 a raid on Lbischensk, where the headquarters of the red group, rear units and carts were located. The White Cossacks, using their excellent knowledge of the terrain and the isolation of the headquarters of the 25th rifle division from their units, captured Lbischensk. Hundreds of Red Army soldiers, including the division commander Chapaev, were killed or taken prisoner. The Whites captured large trophies, which was important to them, since they had lost their old supply lines.
The demoralized Red units retreated to their former positions, to the Uralsk region. Ural White Cossacks in October again blocked Uralsk. However, in conditions of isolation from other white troops, lack of sources of replenishment of weapons and ammunition, the Ural army of General Tolstov was doomed to defeat. In early November 1919, the Turkestan Front went on the offensive again. Under the pressure of the superior forces of the Reds, in conditions of a shortage of weapons and ammunition, the White Cossacks began to retreat again. On November 20, the Reds occupied Lbischensk, but the Cossacks again managed to escape the encirclement. In December 1919, pulling up reinforcements and rear services, the Turkestan Front resumed its offensive. The defense of the White Cossacks was broken. On December 11, Slamikhinskaya fell, on December 18, the Reds captured the Kalmyks, thereby cutting off the retreat paths of the Iletsk corps, and on December 22 - Gorsky, one of the last strongholds of the Urals before Guryev. Tolstov's Cossacks retreated to Guryev.
The remnants of the Iletsk corps, having suffered heavy losses in battles during the retreat, and from typhus, on January 4, 1920, were almost completely destroyed and captured by the Reds near the settlement of Maly Baybuz. On January 5, 1920, the Reds took Guryev. Some of the White Cossacks were captured, some went over to the side of the Reds. The remnants of the Urals, led by General Tolstov, with carts, families and refugees (about 15 thousand people in total) decided to go south and unite with the Turkestan army of General Kazanovich. We left along the eastern coast of the Caspian Sea to Fort Aleksandrovsky. The transition was extremely difficult - in winter conditions (January - March 1920), lack of food, water and medicine. As a result of the "Death March" ("Ice campaign in the desert"), only about 2 thousand people survived. The rest died in clashes with the Reds, but mostly from cold, hunger and disease. The survivors were sick, mostly with typhus.
The Urals planned to cross the ships of the Caspian flotilla of the Armed Forces of South Russia to the other side of the sea to Port-Petrovsk. However, by this time the Denikinites in the Caucasus were also defeated, and Petrovsk was abandoned at the end of March. In early April, the Reds captured the remnants of the Ural army in Fort Alexandrovsky. A small group led by Tolstov fled to Krasnovodsk and further to Persia. From there, the British sent a detachment of Ural Cossacks to Vladivostok. With the fall of Vladivostok in the fall of 1922, the Ural Cossacks fled to China.
The 3rd and 5th armies remained in the Eastern Front. The troops of the Eastern Front were to liberate Siberia. In mid-August 1919, the armies of the Eastern Front, pursuing the defeated troops of the White Guards, reached the Tobol River. The main forces of the 5th Red Army moved along the Kurgan - Petropavlovsk - Omsk railway. The 3rd Army was advancing with its main forces along the Yalutorovsk-Ishim railway line.
The collapse of the rear of Kolchak's army
The situation in the rear for White was extremely difficult, almost catastrophic. The repressive, anti-popular policy of the Kolchak government caused a large-scale peasant war in Siberia. She became one of the main reasons for the rapid fall of the power of the "supreme ruler". On this basis, the red partisans became sharply stronger. The partisan detachments were formed on the basis of the defeated Red detachments, which in the summer of 1918 were thrown back into the taiga by the Czechoslovak and White Guard troops. Detachments of peasants who hated the Kolchakites began to group around them. The soldiers of these detachments knew the area very well, among them there were many World War veterans, experienced hunters. Therefore, it was difficult for weak government detachments (in the rear the most ineffective element was left), made up of inexperienced, young soldiers, and often a declassed, criminal element who wanted to plunder rich Siberian villages, it was difficult to control the situation in such vast spaces.
Thus, the peasant and partisan war was rapidly gaining momentum. Repressions, terror of Kolchak and Czechoslovakians only added fuel to the fire. At the beginning of 1919, the entire Yenisei province was covered with a whole network of partisan detachments. The Siberian Railway, in fact the only supply line for the White Guards, was under threat. The Czechoslovak corps was actually engaged only in guarding the Siberian Railway. The Kolchak government intensified its punitive policy, but mostly civilians suffered from it. Punishers burned entire villages, took hostages, flogged entire villages, robbed and raped. This increased the people's hatred of whites, completely embittered the Siberian peasantry and strengthened the position of the Red partisans, Bolsheviks. A whole peasant army was created with its own headquarters and intelligence. Soon the fire of the peasant war spread from the Yenisei province to the neighboring districts of the Irkutsk province and to the Altai region. In the summer, such a fire blazed in Siberia that the Kolchak regime could not extinguish it.
The Siberian government asked the Entente for help, so that the West forced the Czechoslovak corps to side with the Kolchakites. The Czechoslovak units, together with the Whites, again pushed back into the taiga detachments of Siberian rebels, who threatened the Siberian Railway. The offensive of the Czech legionnaires, who are given memorial signs in modern Russia, was accompanied by mass terror. In addition, this success was bought at the price of the final decomposition of the Czech units, which were mired in plunder and looting. The Czechoslovakians plundered so much that they did not want to leave their echelons, which were turned into warehouses of various values and goods. On July 27, 1919, the Kolchak government asked the Entente to withdraw the Czechoslovak corps from Siberia and replace it with other foreign troops. It was dangerous to leave Czech legionaries in Siberia.
The Entente command at this time was thinking about a new change of power in Siberia. Kolchak's regime has exhausted itself, it was used completely. The collapse of the front and the situation in the rear forced the West to turn its gaze again to the Socialist-Revolutionaries and other "democrats". They had to bring the White movement in Siberia out of the dead end, where Kolchak had led it. The Socialist-Revolutionaries, in turn, groped for the ground with the Entente at the expense of the military coup, sought support from the city intelligentsia and part of the young Kolchak officers. A "democratic" coup was planned. In the end, this is exactly what happened: the West and the Czechoslovak command "merged" Kolchak, but this did not save the whites.
White command plans
The commander-in-chief of the Eastern Front of the White Army, Dieterichs, quickly withdrew the previously defeated white units (the defeat of the Kolchakites in the Chelyabinsk battle) beyond the Tobol and Ishim rivers, in order, relying on these lines, to try to cover the political center of the Whites in Siberia - Omsk. Also here was the center of the Siberian Cossacks, which still supported the power of Kolchak. A continuous period of peasant uprisings began behind the Omsk region. After a heavy defeat in the battle for Chelyabinsk, the combat-ready forces of Kolchak's army were reduced to 50 bayonets and sabers, while there were a huge number of people on the allowance - up to 300 thousand. property. Families of the White Guards left the cities with parts. As a result, the retreating units were transformed into columns of refugees, losing even the remnants of their combat capability. The division had 400 - 500 active fighters each, who covered thousands of carts with a huge mass of refugees, non-combatants.
Kolchak's amia was crushed and diminished. Despite a sharp decrease in its number, the same number of high command, headquarters and administrative structures remained in it - the Kolchak Headquarters, five army headquarters, 11 corps, 35 divisional and brigade headquarters. There were too many generals for the number of soldiers. This made it difficult to control, turned off many people from the combat strength. And Kolchak's Headquarters did not have the courage to reorganize, reduce unnecessary headquarters and structures.
The army was left without heavy artillery, abandoned in the course of the defeats. And almost without machine guns. Kolchak requested weapons from the Entente, but the allies supplied the Kolchakites (for gold) with thousands of outdated machine guns, stationary type on high tripods, which were unsuitable for the maneuverable war that the opponents waged during the Civil. Naturally, whites quickly abandoned this bulky weapon. All the calls of the Kolchak government for mobilization and volunteering were met with indifference, including among the possessing classes. The most passionate of the officers and city intelligentsia had already fought, the rest were against the Kolchak regime. It was not even possible to recruit thousands of volunteers. The peasants, mobilized into the army, fled en masse from the draft, deserted from the units, went over to the side of the Reds and the partisans. The Cossack regions - the Orenburg and Ural regions were actually cut off, they waged their own wars. The Trans-Baikal Cossack army of Ataman Semyonov and the Ussuri Ataman Kalmykov pursued their policy, focused on Japan, and did not give troops to the Kolchak government. Semyonov and Kalmykov perceived Omsk only as a cash cow. Several regiments were given by Ataman Annenkov, commander of the Separate Semirechye Army. But without their harsh chieftain, they immediately disintegrated, did not reach the front and staged such large-scale robberies that the Kolchakites had to shoot the most zealous.
The main stake was made on the Siberian Cossacks, to whose lands the Bolsheviks had already approached. However, the Siberian Cossacks were also not reliable. Was worn with "independence". In Omsk, the Cossack Confederation sat, something like the Circle of all Eastern Cossack troops. She did not obey the "supreme ruler", adopted resolutions on "autonomy" and blocked all attempts of the Siberian government to rein in the robber atamans Semyonov and Kalmykov. The Siberian ataman was General Ivanov-Rinov, an ambitious but narrow-minded man. Kolchak could not replace him, the chieftain was an elected figure, he had to reckon with him. Ivanov-Rinov, taking advantage of the hopeless position of the "supreme ruler", demanded a huge amount of money for the creation of the Siberian corps, supplies for 20 thousand people. Cossack villages were bombarded with monetary subsidies, gifts, various goods, weapons, uniforms, etc. The villages decided that they were going to fight. But as soon as it came down to business, the ardor quickly faded away. It was time to harvest the crops, the Cossacks did not want to leave their homes. Some villages began to refuse to go to the front under the pretext of the need to fight the partisans, others secretly decided not to send fighters to the front, since the Reds would soon come and take revenge. Some Cossack units acted, but they were arbitrary, poorly subordinate to discipline. As a result, the mobilization of the Siberian Cossacks dragged on for a long time, and they gathered much fewer fighters than planned.
The white leadership had two plans to get out of the disaster. The Minister of War, General Budberg, reasonably noted that the bloodless, demoralized units were no longer capable of attacking. He proposed to create a long-term defense on the borders of Tobol and Ishim. To gain time, at least two months, before the onset of winter, to give the troops a rest, prepare new units, restore order in the rear and obtain substantial assistance from the Entente. The onset of winter was to interrupt active offensive operations. And in the winter it was possible to restore the army, prepare reserves, and then in the spring go on a counteroffensive. In addition, there was a possibility that the White Southern Front would win, take Moscow. It seemed that it was only necessary to gain time, hold out a little, and Denikin's army would crush the Bolsheviks.
Obviously, Budberg's plan had weaknesses as well. Kolchak's units were greatly weakened, lost the ability to maintain a tough defense. The front was huge, the Reds could easily find weak spots, concentrate their forces on a narrow area and hack into the White Guards' defenses. The white command had no reserves to block the breach, and the breach was guaranteed to lead to general flight and disaster. In addition, the Reds could attack in winter (in the winter of 1919 - 1920 they did not stop their movement). Also questionable was the rear, which was collapsing literally before our eyes.
The commander-in-chief, General Dieterichs, offered to attack. The Red Army was continuously advancing from the Volga to Tobol and had to run out of steam. Therefore, he proposed to gather the last forces and launch a counteroffensive. A successful offensive could inspire troops that could no longer defend themselves successfully. It distracted part of the Red Army forces from the main Moscow direction, where Denikin's army was advancing.
The plan for the defeat of the 5th red army
The Siberian government needed military success to bolster its shaky political position in the eyes of the local population and Western allies. Therefore, the government supported the Dieterichs plan. The leading prerequisite for the last offensive of Kolchak's army on the Tobol River was the demands of politics, which ran counter to the interests of military strategy. Militarily, the white units were exhausted and drained of blood by previous battles, greatly demoralized by defeats. There were practically no active reinforcements. That is, the strength of the White Guards, neither in quantity nor in quality, did not allow counting on decisive success. Great hopes were pinned on the Separate Siberian Cossack Corps, which was mobilized in August 1919 (about 7 thousand people). He was supposed to play the role of the shock fist of Kolchak's army. In addition, five divisions were pulled from the Tobol line to Petropavlovsk, replenished them, after which some were to attack the enemy from the depths of the front.
The white command hoped for surprise and speed of the strike. The Reds believed that the Kolchakites had already been defeated and withdrew some of the troops for transfer to the Southern Front. However, the white command overestimated the combat and morale of its troops, and once again underestimated the enemy. The Red Army was not exhausted by the offensive. It was replenished in a timely manner with fresh forces. Every victory, every city taken, resulted in an infusion of local reinforcements. At the same time, the red units no longer decomposed, as it was before in 1918, early 1919 - after victories (drunkenness, robberies, etc.) or failures (desertion, unauthorized withdrawal from the front of units, etc.). The Red Army was now created following the example of the former imperial army, with strict order and discipline. Created by former tsarist generals and officers.
The offensive was planned by the forces of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd armies on the front between Ishim and Tobol. The main blow was inflicted on the left flank, where Sakharov's 3rd Army was pushed forward with a ledge and the Siberian Cossack Corps of General Ivanov-Rinov was located. Sakharov's army and the Siberian Cossack Corps numbered over 23 thousand bayonets and sabers, about 120 guns. The 1st Siberian Army under the command of General Pepelyaev was supposed to advance along the Omsk-Ishim-Tyumen railway, pinning down the units of Mezheninov's 3rd Red Army. The 2nd Siberian Army under the command of General Lokhvitsky struck at the most powerful and dangerous 5th Red Army of Tukhachevsky from the right flank to its rear. 1st and 2nd armies numbered over 30 thousand people, over 110 guns. General Sakharov's 3rd Army inflicted a frontal attack on Tukhachevsky's army along the Omsk-Petropavlovsk-Kurgan railway line. The steppe group under the command of General Lebedev covered the left wing of Sakharov's 3rd Army. The Ob-Irkutsk flotilla carried out a number of landing operations. Particular hopes were pinned on the Ivanov-Rinov corps. The Cossack cavalry was supposed to go to the rear of the 5th Red Army, penetrate deeply into the enemy's location, contributing to the encirclement of the main forces of the Red Army.
Thus, the success of the operation on Tobol should have led to the encirclement and destruction of the 5th Army, a heavy defeat of the Eastern Front of the Reds. This allowed Kolchak's army to gain time, survive the winter and go on the offensive again in the spring.
August 15, 1919armies of whites and reds entered into close combat contact again on the Tobol line. On the Ishim-Tobolsk direction, the 3rd Army was advancing - about 26 thousand bayonets and sabers, 95 guns, more than 600 machine guns. The 5th Army was advancing on Petropavlovsk - about 35 thousand bayonets and sabers, about 80 guns, over 470 machine guns. The red command also planned to develop the offensive. The size of the Soviet armies, their weapons and morale (high after the victories won) allowed for the continuation of offensive operations. At the same time, the red armies of the Eastern Front found themselves strongly on a ledge forward in relation to the troops of the Turkestan Front, which at that time fought with the Orenburg and Ural Cossacks, approximately on the Orsk-Lbischensk front. Therefore, the 5th Army of Tukhachevsky had to provide its right wing with the allocation of a special barrier to the Kustanai direction. The 35th Infantry Division was transferred here from the left flank of the army.
The Reds were the first to go on the offensive. The Whites delayed the preparation and mobilization of the Siberian Cossacks. After a short pause, the Red Army crossed the Tobol on August 20, 1919. In places White stubbornly resisted, but was defeated. Red troops rushed east.
