Surrounded by the Red Army after the Germans left Ukraine, seeing no help from either the Anglo-French allies or from Denikin's volunteers, under the influence of the anti-war agitation of the Bolsheviks, the Don Army at the end of 1918 began to decompose and barely held back the offensive of four Red armies of 130,000 people. The Cossacks of the Upper Don District began to defect or go over to the side of the Red Army, and the northern sector of the front collapsed. The Bolsheviks broke into the Don. Soon after, a mass terror against the Cossacks began, later called "decossackization". At the same time, the revolution began in Germany and the Bolshevik leadership believed in their quick victory in Russia and in the possibility of transferring the civil war to European territory. Europe really smelled like a "world revolution". To free their hands for action in Europe, the Bolshevik leaders planned to suppress the Cossacks with one decisive and brutal blow. By this time, the Orthodox clergy had actually been defeated. It was the turn of the Cossacks - the Bolsheviks understood that without the destruction of the Cossacks, their domination was impossible. Beginning in the winter of 1919, the offensive, the Bolshevik Central Committee decided to transfer the policy of "red terror" to the Cossack territories.
In the Directive of the Organizing Bureau of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) of January 24, 1919, it was ordered to apply massive repressions against all Cossacks who, directly or indirectly, did not agree with the Soviet regime. It read: “The latest events on various fronts in the Cossack regions - our advances deep into the Cossack settlements and the decomposition among the Cossack troops force us to give instructions to party workers about the nature of work in the restoration and strengthening of Soviet power in these areas. It is necessary, taking into account the experience of the year of the civil war with the Cossacks, to recognize the only right thing to be the most merciless struggle against all the tops of the Cossacks through their universal extermination. No compromise, no half-heartedness is acceptable.
Therefore, it is necessary:
1. Carry out a mass terror against the rich Cossacks, exterminating them without exception;
to carry out a merciless mass terror against the Cossacks in general, who took any direct or indirect part in the struggle against Soviet power. It is necessary to apply to the middle Cossacks all those measures that provide a guarantee against any attempts on their part to new actions against Soviet power.
2. Confiscate bread and force all surplus to be poured into the indicated points. This applies to both bread and all other agricultural products.
3. Apply all measures to assist the resettling immigrant poor, organizing resettlement where possible.
4. Equalize the newcomers "nonresident" to the Cossacks in land and in all other respects.
5. Conduct complete disarmament, shooting everyone who is found to have a weapon after the deadline.
6. Give out weapons only to reliable elements from other cities.
7. Leave the armed detachments in the Cossack villages from now on until complete order is established.
8. All commissars appointed to certain Cossack settlements are encouraged to show maximum firmness and unswervingly carry out these instructions.
The Central Committee resolves to pass through the appropriate Soviet institutions an obligation to the People's Commissariat of Agriculture to work out in a hurry the actual measures for the mass resettlement of the poor to the Cossack lands.
Ya. Sverdlov.
All points of the directive for the Cossacks were simply unique and meant the complete destruction of the Cossack life based on Cossack service and Cossack land ownership, that is, complete decossackization. Clause 5 on complete disarmament was unprecedented for the Cossacks as a service and military class. Even after the Pugachev uprising, only artillery was withdrawn from Yaitsky's troops, cold and firearms were left to the Cossacks, having only introduced control over ammunition. This draconian and obscurantist directive was the Bolshevik response to the Cossacks of the Upper Don District, who at the end of 1918 expressed their credulity and obedience to the Soviet regime, abandoned the front, went home, and made a tremendous impression on them. M. Sholokhov brilliantly wrote about the incredible metamorphoses and vicissitudes of the Cossack worldview at that time and in those places in "Quiet Don" on the example of Grigory Melekhov and his fellow countrymen. The directive made no less impression on other Cossacks, who were finally convinced of the boundless treachery of the new government. However, it should be said that in reality this directive concerned only the Don and the Urals, where Soviet troops were stationed at that time. It is difficult to imagine an even more stupid and untimely undertaking during that period of the civil war than this anti-cash directive. The Cossacks responded with massive uprisings. When they were suppressed, there was a war of destruction, without prisoners. So who are they, these main stranglers of the Cossacks?
Person number 1: Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Lenin) - the executioner of the Russian people and a paid agent of imperial Germany. As soon as the First World War began, Lenin, who was in exile, proclaimed the task of the Bolshevik Party: to turn the imperialist war into a civil war and offered his services to the German General Staff. Not agreeing on the price, the German government then refused his services, but continued to provide sponsorship to the Bolsheviks for the implementation of the betrayal of the national interests of Russia. After the February revolution, their time came, and the German general Ludendorff organized the delivery from Switzerland to Petrograd, in special sealed carriages, for a total of 224 re-emigrants of the Social Democrats led by Lenin. At the same time, the banker Jacob Schiff organized the delivery of re-emigrants of the Socialists from the United States by steamer across the ocean, among whom 265 were his paid agents. Subsequently, many of these leaders became the leaders of the "proletarian revolution." On the other hand, the Bolsheviks received tremendous support from international Zionist capital. Being secret Masons without exception, the Bolshevik leaders had little interest in the national interests of Russia. They carried out the will of the Grand Masters of the international Masonic organization. In 1917, through Lenin's associate, the freemason Parvus (aka Gelfand), Germany transferred to Lenin about 100 million marks. Only on July 18, 1917, 3 million 150 thousand marks were transferred from a German bank to Lenin's account in Kronstadt. The Bolsheviks also received money from the United States. In April 1917, Jacob Schiff publicly announced that, thanks to his financial support for the Russian revolution, success was ensured. More details about this were written in the article "Cossacks and the October Revolution".
Person number 2: Yakov Mikhailovich Sverdlov (Yeshua Solomon Movshevich). It was he who, from the Kremlin, directed the execution of the royal family in Yekaterinburg in 1918. After the assassination attempt on Lenin, the Socialist-Revolutionary Kaplan, who was a relative of Sverdlov, he signed the appeal of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the merciless terror. On January 24, 1919, the Organizing Bureau of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) issued a directive on decossackization, signed by Yakov Sverdlov. This directive immediately began to be implemented in the territories controlled by the red. However, soon Sverdlov was fatally beaten by workers at a rally in Orel, according to the official version, he died of a cold.
But the chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council, Lev Davidovich Trotsky (Leiba Davidovich Bronstein), who was born into the family of a usurer, was particularly cruel. At first, he participated in the revolutionary struggle as a Menshevik, then, while in exile, he joined the Freemasons, was recruited as a secret agent, first by the Austrian (1911-1917), and then by the German (1917-1918) intelligence services. Through a man close to Trotsky, Parvus (Gelfand), the Bolsheviks received money for the October coup from the German General Staff. In 1917, Trotsky suddenly becomes a "fiery Bolshevik" and breaks through to the top of the Soviet government. After Lenin's death, without sharing power with Stalin, he was forced to flee abroad. Killed by NKVD agent Ramon Mercader in Mexico with an ice ax blow to the head. Trotsky and his assistant commissars Larin (Lurie Mikhail Zelmanovich), Smilga Ivar, Poluyan Yan Vasilievich, Gusev Sergei Ivanovich (Drabkin Yakov Davidovich), Bela Kun, Zemlyachka (Zalkind), Sklyansky Efraim Markovich, Beloborodov (Weisbart) and others like them a bloody meat grinder both throughout Russia and on the primordial Cossack land.
At the beginning of 1919, the Don army was bleeding, but held the front. Only in February began the transfer of the Kuban army to the aid of the Don. In the course of stubborn battles, the advancing red units were stopped, defeated and went over to the defensive. In response to the exterminating terror of the Bolsheviks on February 26, a general uprising of the Cossacks of the Upper Don District broke out, which was called the Vyoshensky uprising. The insurgent Cossacks formed a militia of up to 40 thousand bayonets and sabers, including old people and teenagers, and fought in complete encirclement until units of the Don army of General Sekretyov broke through to their aid. In the spring of 1919, Russia entered the most difficult stage of the civil war. The Supreme Council of the Entente supported the plan for a military campaign by the whites against the Bolsheviks. On January 31, Franco-Greek troops landed in southern Ukraine and occupied Odessa, Kherson and Nikolaev. During the winter of 1918-1919, it was delivered to the white armies: 400 thousand rifles to Kolchak and up to 380 thousand to Denikin, about 1 thousand trucks, tanks, armored cars and aircraft, ammunition and uniforms for several hundred thousand people. By the summer of 1919, the center of the armed struggle had moved to the Southern Front. Widespread peasant-Cossack uprisings disorganized the rear of the Red Army. The uprising of the red division commander Grigoriev, which led in May to a general military-political crisis in Ukraine, and the Vyoshensky uprising of the Cossacks on the Don were especially widespread. Large forces of the Red Army were sent to suppress them, but in the battles with the rebels, the soldiers of the red units showed instability. In the favorable conditions created, the Armed Forces of Yugoslavia defeated the opposing Bolshevik forces and entered the operational space. After heavy fighting, on June 17, Tsaritsyn was occupied by units of the Caucasian army on the right flank, and on the left flank, white units occupied Kharkov, Aleksandrovsk, Yekaterinoslav, Crimea. Under pressure from the allies, on June 12, 1919, Denikin officially recognized the power of Admiral Kolchak as the Supreme Ruler of the Russian state and the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Russian armies.
On the entire front, the Reds were retreating, on the side of the Whites were the superior masses of the Cossack cavalry, which played a decisive role at this stage of the civil war. In connection with the general successes, General Denikin on June 20 arrived with General Romanovsky in Tsaritsyn. There he held a parade, declared gratitude to the army, and then issued a directive for an attack on Moscow. In response, on July 9, the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party published a letter "All for the fight against Denikin!" By the time of the publication of the directive on the campaign against Moscow, the Don army had replenished and had 42,000 fighters, brought together in three corps, deployed at a front of 550-600 miles. The Don army went beyond the Don and entered the territories occupied by the population of central Russia. This line became not only a front line, but also a political line. The middle provinces of the Russian state are the same Russia, on whose shoulders the centuries of struggle with the nomadic steppe lay, and it was destined to withstand and withstand this centuries-old boiling cauldron of struggle. But the population of these very middle Russian provinces was the most disadvantaged in terms of land allotments. The great reforms of the sixties, which freed the peasants from the dependence of the landowners, did not resolve the main issue of land tenure, served as a reason for the discontent of the peasants and provided excellent reasons for the propaganda of Bolshevik agitators.
The revolution opened this sick abscess, and it was resolved spontaneously, regardless of state decrees, by a simple "black" redistribution, with the help of the unauthorized seizure of land by large owners by peasants. For the Russian peasantry, which constituted up to 75% of the population, the land issue began and ended all political problems, and political slogans were acceptable only to those that promised them land. They did not care at all whether such regions as Poland, Finland, the Baltic States, the Caucasus and others would become part of the Russian state, forming a great and indivisible Russia. On the contrary, these conversations terribly frightened the peasants, they saw in them the danger of a return to the old order, and for them it meant the loss of the land they had seized without permission. It is therefore clear that the arrival of the white armies in these provinces, returning the old order, did not arouse enthusiasm among the local residents. The fact that the appointed governors announced a new democratic redistribution of land, which supposedly would be dealt with by special land authorities, these speeches were not taken into account, because a new partition was promised only three years after the restoration of order in the entire Russian state. From the point of view of the distrustful Russian peasant, this meant "never." The Bolsheviks, on the second day of their stay in power, adopted the "Decree on the Land", actually legalizing the "black redistribution", and thereby decided the outcome of the civil war in Central Russia in their favor.
The situation was completely different in Ukraine. In the civil war in the south, this richest and most fertile part of the Russian Empire occupied a special position. The historical past of this region was completely different from that of the central regions of Russia. The left-bank and right-bank Ukraine was the cradle of the Dnieper Cossacks and peasants who did not know serfdom. After the cessation of the existence of the Dnieper Cossacks and the transformation of their remnants into hussar regiments, the lands of the Cossacks passed into the ownership of persons awarded by the government for special merit, and were settled by immigrants from the Russian and non-Russian provinces of the vast empire, which created an incredibly motley ethnic polyphony in the Black Sea provinces. Domestic life in the new region developed completely differently than in the central regions. The empire was able to take possession of all the vast lands of Little Russia only by the end of the 18th century. The Russian state by this time was quite powerful and in these lands there was no longer a need to create a voivodeship with a population attached to them, which is why there was no need for the formation of a strong serfdom. The lands were fertile, the climate was favorable, which greatly mitigated the problems associated with land scarcity. The population of Little Russia, or Ukraine, was estimated at almost 30 million inhabitants. It would seem that this part of the country, more prosperous and less constrained by the living conditions of the past, should have shown stability and resistance to the disorder that was taking place in the anarchy taking place around it. But it was not there. Among the people of this land, a consciousness associated with its Maidan past, the Zaporozhye Sich, Cossack liberties and an independent life firmly lived. An important feature of the Ukrainian people, or Little Russians, was that up to 70% of the population spoke a local language that was different from the language of Great Russia and had a significantly different mentality.
Fig. 1 The spread of languages in Little Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century
This feature indicated that this population belonged to another branch of the Russian people, who voluntarily joined Great Russia only in the middle of the 17th century. Over the past 2, 5 centuries of being a part of Russia, the situation has changed only in that a significant part of the educated Little Russians learned Russian and became bilingual, and the Polish-Ukrainian gentry, in order to earn and secure the estates, learned to regularly serve the empire. The main parts of the Little Russian population in the past made up parts of Galicia, Kiev, Chervonnaya and Black Russia, which for many centuries were part of the Lithuanian-Polish possessions. The past of this region was closely connected with Lithuania and Poland, with the Cossack liberties, the independence of the lost Cossack way of life, which was partially preserved in the former Cossack regions of the Dnieper region. The difficult fate of the Dnieper Cossacks earlier on "VO" was written in more detail in this series of articles. In the folk life of the Little Russians, local folklore was carefully preserved, fanned with poetry, legends, songs associated with the not so distant past. All this violent folklore and household herbs were abundantly watered and fertilized by the Ukrainian intelligentsia, which secretly and hypocritically gradually gave it anti-Russian cultural and political shades. In the beginning of the revolutionary collapse, a significant part of Little Russia was part of the front-line zone, and for a long time was filled with masses of soldiers from the decayed parts of the army. Awakened nationalism could not, under such conditions, take on more or less civilized forms. Under the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, Ukraine was ceded to Germany and occupied by Austro-German troops. Having occupied Ukraine, the Austro-Germans installed it as the ruler of the hetman, General Skoropadsky, under whose rule Ukraine was presented as an autonomous, independent republic, with all the necessary forms of its existence. The right to form a national army was even declared. However, on the part of the Germans, this was a distraction, covering the real targets. The purpose of the occupation of this rich Russian region, like other 19 provinces, was to replenish all kinds of resources of a completely depleted Germany. She needed bread and much more to continue the war. The hetman's power in Ukraine was largely fictitious. The occupation command mercilessly exploited all the country's resources and exported them to Germany and Austria. The cruel requisition of grain reserves provoked the resistance of the peasants, with whom a ruthless reprisal was carried out.
Rice. 2 Austrian terror in occupied Ukraine
The cruel exploitation of the local population aroused hatred among the masses, but at the same time it was welcomed by a part of the population seeking salvation from the anarchy and lawlessness of the spreading communism. With such discord and confusion in Ukraine, the organization of a national army was out of the question. At the same time, Ukraine attracted Cossack regions, close to it in spirit, and embassies from the Don and Kuban reached out to Hetman Skoropadsky. Through Hetman Skoropadsky, Ataman Krasnov entered the sphere of big international politics. He entered into correspondence with the leadership of Germany and in letters addressed to the Kaiser, asked for help in the fight against the Bolsheviks and the recognition of diplomatic rights for the Don as a country fighting for its independence against the Bolsheviks. These relations had the meaning that during the time of the occupation of the territory of Russia the Germans supplied the Don with the necessary weapons and military supplies. In return, Krasnov gave Kaiser Wilhelm guarantees of the neutrality of the Don troops in the world war, with the obligation to expand trade, preferences and benefits for German industry and capital. Under pressure from the Germans, Ukraine recognized the old borders of the Don region and the Don troops entered Taganrog.
As soon as the ataman received Taganrog, he immediately took the Russian-Baltic plant and adapted it for the production of shells and cartridges, and by the beginning of 1919 reached the production of 300,000 cartridges per day. Don was proud that the entire Don army was dressed from head to toe in their own, sitting on their horses and in their saddles. Don asked Emperor Wilhelm for machinery and equipment for factories in order to get rid of the guardianship of foreigners as soon as possible. This was the Don Russian orientation, so understandable to the common people and completely incomprehensible to the Russian intelligentsia, which was always accustomed to bowing to some foreign idol. The ataman looked at the Germans as enemies who had come to reconcile, and believed that one could ask of them. He looked at the allies as debtors to Russia and the Don, and believed that they needed to be demanded. But waiting for Don's help from them turned out to be a complete chimera. After the defeat of Germany by the allies and the withdrawal of its troops from the Ukraine, all aid to the Don disappeared.
By the summer of 1919, the Reds had concentrated six armies, consisting of 150,000 fighters, against the Cossacks and volunteers on the Southern Front. Their main task was to prevent Denikin's troops from connecting with Kolchak's army. The Kuban army, having occupied Tsaritsyn, was stopped for rest, replenishment and putting in order. In the battles of Tsaritsyn, the 10th Red Army was severely disordered, and only a few divisions and Budyonny's cavalry corps retained their combat effectiveness. Due to defeats, the Commander-in-Chief of the Red Army, Vatsetis, was removed from command on July 9, and the former colonel of the General Staff, Kamenev, took his place. Former colonel of the General Staff, Yegoriev, was appointed commander of the Southern Front. On July 2, General Denikin ordered the Caucasian Army (Kuban + Terskaya) to go on the offensive. On July 14, the Cossacks occupied Linkovka and cut off the 10th Army's retreat routes to the north. The Red Army was cut in two, and three divisions were surrounded in Kamyshin. While trying to break through to the north, these red divisions were attacked by the Cossacks and completely destroyed by them. Rescuing the situation, the red corps of Budyonny was directed against the I Don corps. Budyonny pushed part of the bottom to the line of the Ilovli River. This partial success did not save Kamyshin and on July 15 was occupied by the Cossacks. After the occupation of Kamyshin, the movement was to continue to Saratov. To defend Saratov, the Reds pulled together troops from the Eastern Front and mobilized units from Russia. Despite the state of the troops of the Caucasian army, General Romanovsky, the chief of staff of General Denikin, telegraphed the order of the commander-in-chief to continue the offensive.
At a time when the Caucasian army was fighting on the Kamyshin front and beyond, the Don army occupied the front on the Novy Oskol - Liski station line. Until the end of July, the Don army waged stubborn offensive battles for the capture of the Liski - Balashov - Krasny Yar railway lines, but which it failed to capture. The battles went from hand to hand in the cities of Liski, Bobrov, Novokhopyorsk and Borisoglebsk. The Don army was in the main direction to Moscow. After regrouping, the Red 9th Army, supported by the flanking units of the 10th and 8th armies, went on the offensive, pushed back units of the Don Front and occupied Novokhopyorsk, Borisoglebsk and Balashov. The Donets were pushed back from the Russian territory to the borders of Russia and the Don. Heavy and stubborn battles were fought along the entire front. At this difficult moment, the Don command adopted a bold project. It was decided to create a special shock cavalry corps of a strong composition and send it to the rear of the Reds. The purpose of the raid: disrupting the counteroffensive and attacking the headquarters of the Red front, destroying the rear, damaging railways and disrupting transport.
The IV cavalry corps of General Mamontov, formed for this, was made up of the best units of the Don army, numbering 7000 horsemen. The breakthrough of the Red front was planned at the junction of the 8th and 9th Red armies. The operation began on 28 July. The corps, not meeting resistance, went into a deep raid and on July 30 captured a train with mobilized men heading to replenish one of the Red divisions. About three thousand mobilized Red Army soldiers were taken prisoner and disbanded to their homes. In addition, a mobilization point was captured, where up to five thousand newly mobilized Reds were gathered, who were immediately disbanded, to their delight. Many wagons were captured with shells, cartridges, hand grenades and quartermaster property. The 56th Red Infantry Division, sent to eliminate the breakthrough, was destroyed. A cavalry brigade moved from the southeast towards the corps, which was also utterly defeated. Meeting a heavily fortified position south of Tambov, the corps bypassed it and took Tambov on 5 August. Up to 15,000 conscripts were disbanded in the city. From Tambov, the corps headed towards Kozlov, where the headquarters of the Southern Front was located. The breakthrough of the front by the IV Don Corps brought great alarm to the headquarters of the Red Command. The Defense Council of the Republic declared the Ryazan, Tula, Orel, Voronezh, Tambov and Penza provinces on martial law and ordered the establishment of district and city committees of military revolutionary courts everywhere. However, the brilliant activity of the IV Don Corps produced more moral than operational impact and was essentially limited to actions of a purely tactical order.
The impression was that the cavalry corps sent deep into the rear seemed to have a goal isolated from the general course of the war. During his movement along the rear of the red armies, on the part of the whites at the front, there were no adequately powerful and active actions. At the head of the red armed forces were already officers of the general staff, who knew military affairs no worse than the command of the whites. The breakthrough for them was an unpleasant phenomenon due to the confusion of the troops under their control. Even at the top, in the Defense Council, some were afraid of the appearance of the Cossacks near Moscow, but for the officers who were well versed in military operations, it was clear that the cavalry corps, poorly supported from the front, would quickly fizzle out, and would itself look for a safe exit. Therefore, the red command set the goal of eliminating the breakthrough and at the same time the transition of parts of the 8th army to the offensive against the III Don corps at the junction of it with the front of the Good Army. This offensive of the Reds and the withdrawal of the Cossacks exposed the left flank of May-Mayevsky's units and created a threat to Kharkov, where Denikin's headquarters was located. The Red Army was deeply wedged in 100-120 versts on the front of the III Don Corps. There were no reserves at the disposal of the white command, and it was necessary to use the cavalry. From the first Kuban and second Terek brigades, the III Cavalry Corps was created under the command of General Shkuro, who was subordinate to May-Mayevsky. By blows from the west of the corps of General Shkuro and from the southeast of the Don corps, this deeply cut wedge was destroyed, and the Reds were thrown not only to their original position, but 40-60 versts to the north. At the same time, the corps of General Mamantov continued to operate in the rear of the 8th Army, destroying the rear of the Reds, he occupied Yelets. Special communist regiments and units of Latvians were drawn up against Mamantov's corps. From the east was a cavalry brigade with the support of cadets and armored detachments. From Yelets Mamantov moved to Voronezh. From the side of the Reds, several infantry divisions were drawn together, and the order was given to Budyonny's corps to also head against Mamantov. On August 24, Mamantov's corps occupied Kastornaya, a large station in the rear of the 13th and 8th red armies, which facilitated the activities of the III Don corps, operating from the south. The great success of Mamantov's raid prompted the Reds to reassess the role of cavalry, and their commanding staff had the idea, following the example of the White Cossack cavalry, to create cavalry units and formations of the Red Army, as a result of which Bronstein's order followed, which read: “Proletarians, all on horseback! The main problem of the red armies is the lack of cavalry. Our troops have a maneuverable character, require the highest mobility, which gives the cavalry an important role. Now the devastating raid of Mamontov sharply raised the question of creating numerous red cavalry units.
Our lack of cavalry is not accidental. The revolution of the proletariat was born in the majority in industrial cities. We have no shortage of machine guns, artillerymen, but we are in great need of horsemen. The Soviet republic needs cavalry. Red cavalry, forward! On horseback, proletarians! General Mamantov's raid continued from July 28 for six weeks. The red command took all measures so that the corps could not break through to the south, but this goal was not achieved. With a skillful maneuver, Mamantov demonstratively attacked one of the divisions, where the Reds were pulling together loyal and staunch units, and the corps, changing its movement, crossed over to the western bank of the Don, attacked the rear units of the Reds and left the rear, joining on September 5 with the 1st Kuban division, which was fighting against the same red units on the south side. General Mamantov's corps not only successfully emerged from the rear of the Reds, but also withdrew the Tula Volunteer Infantry Division, which he had formed in a short raid, which all the time took part in battles on the side of the Whites.
Rice. 3 General Mamantov
It should be said that Bronstein's appeal: "Proletarians, all on horseback!" was not an empty sound. The red cavalry quickly emerged as a counterbalance to the White Cossack cavalry, which had an overwhelming numerical and qualitative superiority at the initial stage of the civil war. The basis of the white cavalry was made up of the cavalry corps of the Cossack troops, and the red ones created their cavalry practically from scratch. Initially, its main organizational units were mainly hundreds of troops, squadrons, cavalry units, which did not have a clear organization, constant numbers. In the construction of cavalry as a kind of troops of the Workers 'and Peasants' Red Army, the following stages can be conditionally distinguished:
- creation of hundreds, squadrons, squads and regiments
- reducing them to cavalry formations - brigades and divisions
- the formation of strategic cavalry - cavalry corps and armies.
In the creation of cavalry armies, the Red Army has an unconditional priority. For the first time, a cavalry army under the leadership of General Oranovsky was created at the end of 1915 during heavy defensive battles on the German front, but this experience was unsuccessful. This was described in more detail in the article “Cossacks and the First World War. Part III, 1915 . However, thanks to the indefatigable enthusiasm and talent of real fans of the cavalry case of the Red Cossacks Mironov, Dumenko and Budyonny, this business was brilliantly developed and became one of the decisive military advantages of the Red Army over the white armies.
By the time of the decisive battle on the way to Moscow, according to General Denikin, there were 130,000 fighters in the White Russian army, 75% of them were Cossacks. At the same time, the front of the Cossack troops had a length of 800 miles from the Volga to Novy Oskol. The front, which was engaged in the main part of the Volunteer Army between Novy Oskol and the Desna River, was about 100 miles long. In the attack on Moscow, Ukraine was very important, which, in essence, constituted the third, and very important, front in the fight against the Bolsheviks. On the territory of Ukraine, in a bizarre tangle of contradictions, the interests of various forces intertwined: 1) Ukrainian independence, 2) aggressive Poland, 3) the Bolsheviks, and 4) the Volunteer Army. Scattered independent groups and Poles waged war against the Bolsheviks. The Bolsheviks fought against the Ukrainian rebels and Poles, as well as against the Volunteer and Cossack armies. Denikin, following the idea of restoring United and Indivisible Russia, fought against everyone: the Bolsheviks, Ukrainians and Poles, and the fourth front for him was the rebels in his rear. From the west, from the Ukrainian side, the 13th and 14th armies were deployed by the Reds against the AFSR, and from the White side, significant forces were required to counter. The Red Army could not be proud of its successful mobilization among the Russian and Ukrainian population. By the spring of 1919, the Soviet command intended to put 3 million people under the red banner. However, the implementation of this program was hampered by internal turmoil. Power rested on bayonets. The distribution of armored cars along the fronts is unusually indicative. On the east there were 25 cars, on the west 6, on the south 45, in the rear 46. The punitive Latvian division alone had 12 armored cars. The Reds took brutal measures to force the peasants to join the army, but even cruel reprisals and terror against deserters and the population hiding from joining the ranks of the Red Army did not succeed. Mass desertion during the civil war was one of the most pressing problems of all the belligerent armies. The table shows the number of refuseniks and deserters in the Red Army in 1919, according to N. D. Karpov.
<table width = 44 width = 36 width = 40 width = 40 width = 40 width = 40 width = 45 width = 45 width = 47 width = 47 width = 47 width = 47 width = 47 width = 60 1919
Nevertheless, the mobilization efforts of the Reds bore fruit. After the occupation of Kamyshin by the Caucasian army, Denikin ordered to vigorously pursue the enemy armies in the direction of Saratov, disregarding heavy losses. Reds, having replenished, put up strong resistance. In Saratov, units of the 2nd Army, which had previously been on the Siberian Front, were concentrated. On the front of the Caucasian and Don armies, the Reds regrouped and created shock groups from reliable troops in each of the active armies, a total of 78,000 bayonets, 16,000 sabers, 2,487 machine guns and 491 guns. On August 1, 1919, shock units of the 10th Red Army launched an offensive on Kamyshin at the front of the Caucasian Army and the I Don Corps. On August 14, the Don Plastun brigade was destroyed, and with its death an unprotected front opened along the course of the Medveditsa River to the district center of the village of Ust-Medveditskaya. To cover the resulting void from the front, the head of the garrison announced the mobilization of youths of non-conscription age, starting at 17, and all Cossacks capable of carrying weapons. All the Cossacks of the Don villages responded to this call, and a brigade of two regiments was formed from these called-up Cossacks, which occupied all the right-bank villages of the district from Kremenskaya to Ust-Khoperskaya. Mobilization was also carried out throughout the Don Host. A decisive moment came in the struggle, and Don gave the last thing at his disposal for the struggle. The army lacked horses for cavalry regiments and artillery. The transport to supply the army was supported by women and teenagers. On August 23, the fighting for Tsaritsyn began. The Reds were defeated and, having lost 15 thousand prisoners, 31 guns and 160 machine guns, were thrown back 40 miles to the north. But, having replenished the units, the 10th Red Army, which included the strong cavalry corps of Budyonny, again went on the offensive between the Volga and the Medveditsa. Heavy battles were fought along the entire front, and the Cossacks managed to repel enemy offensives with the capture of a large number of prisoners and weapons. For the successful execution of the directives of the RVS, the cavalry corps of Budyonny was transferred to the junction of the 8th and 9th armies, planning a strike at the junction of the Volunteer and Don armies.
A difficult situation was created for the Don army. Despite this, in the first half of September 1919, the Don and Caucasian armies withstood a frenzied onslaught of shock units of the 8th, 9th, 10th armies in the amount of 94,000 fighters with 2,497 machine guns and 491 guns. Moreover, the 8th and 9th armies were severely defeated, which stopped their decisive offensive on the middle reaches of the Don, and the 11th on the lower Volga. By September 1919, the territory occupied by the AFYUR included: part of the Astrakhan province, the whole Crimea, Yekaterinoslav, Kharkov, Poltava, Kiev and part of the Voronezh provinces, the territory of the Don, Kuban and Tersk troops. On the left flank, the white armies continued the offensive more successfully: Nikolaev was taken on August 18, Odessa on August 23, Kiev on August 30, Kursk on September 20, Voronezh on September 30, Oryol on October 13. It seemed that the Bolsheviks were close to disaster and they began to prepare to go underground. An underground Moscow Party Committee was created, and government agencies began evacuating to Vologda.
But it only seemed to be. In fact, the Bolsheviks had much more supporters and sympathizers in Central Russia than in the south and east and were able to rouse them to fight. In addition, events of a general political nature that were unfavorable for the white movement took place in Europe, and their negative effect began to affect more and more. On June 28, 1919, a peace treaty was signed at the Palace of Versailles in France, officially ending the First World War of 1914-1918. Representatives of Soviet Russia were excluded from the negotiation process, since Russia in 1918 concluded a separate peace with Germany, under which Germany received a significant part of the land and resources in Russia and was able to continue the struggle. Although the Entente powers did not invite the Moscow delegation, they gave the right to speak out to the "Russian foreign delegation" consisting of the former Russian Foreign Minister Sazonov and the former Ambassador of the Provisional Government Nabokov. The members of the delegation deeply felt the historical humiliation of Russia. Nabokov wrote that here "the name of Russia has become anathema." After the conclusion of the Treaty of Versailles, the assistance of the Western allies to the white movement was gradually stopped for various reasons. After the collapse of the Central Powers and the Russian Empire, Britain ruled the eastern hemisphere of the planet and her opinion was decisive. British Prime Minister Lloyd George, shortly after a failed attempt to seat the Whites and Reds at the negotiating table on the Princes' Islands, expressed the following vein: “The expediency of assisting Kolchak and Denikin is all the more controversial because they are“fighting for United Russia”… Not for me to indicate whether this slogan corresponds to the policy of Great Britain … One of our great people, Lord Beaconsfield, saw in huge, mighty and great Russia, rolling like a glacier towards Persia, Afghanistan and India, the most formidable danger for the British Empire … ". The reduction, and then the complete cessation of aid from the Entente, brought the white movement closer to disaster. But Allied betrayal was not the only problem for the White armies at the end of 1919. The presence of "green" and "black" gangs and movements in the rear of the whites diverted significant forces from the front, devastated the population, and generally corrupted the white armies. In the rear, peasant revolts were rising everywhere, and the greatest forces of the whites were diverted to himself by the anarchist Makhno.
Rice. 4 Brigade Commander Makhno and Divisional Commander Dybenko
With the beginning of the offensive of the white troops on Moscow, Makhno began a large-scale guerrilla war in the rear of the whites and again called on the peasant rebels to an alliance with the Reds. The carts were especially popular with the Makhnovists. This ingenious invention radically changed the nature of the civil war in the south. As all ingenious, this invention was outrageously simple and was the fruit of pure eclecticism. Let me remind you that the theory considers 3 main sources of creativity: charisma (talent, God's gift), eclecticism and schizophrenia (splitting reason). Eclecticism is a combination of heterogeneous, previously unconnected, in order to obtain new properties and qualities. For all the seeming simplicity of this genre, eclecticism can give fantastic results. One of the luminaries of this genre in the technique of Henry Ford. He did not invent anything in the car, everything was invented before him and not by him. He did not invent a conveyor belt either. Before him, revolvers, rifles, looms, etc. were assembled on conveyors in America for many decades. But he was the first to assemble cars on an assembly line and made the industrial revolution in the automotive industry. So it is with the cart. In the southern provinces, where sleds are not in use, light sprung Saxon chariots, called by the German colonists carts (they were also called cars, wheelbarrows), were a very common type of personal and hired passenger transport among colonists, wealthy peasants, ordinary people and cabbies. Then everyone saw them there, but did not attach any other significance to them. The machine gun was also invented a long time ago, the designer Maxim introduced it back in 1882. But that obscure Makhnovist of genius, who was the first to put a machine gun on his wheelbarrow and harness four horses to it, radically changed the nature of military operations and the tactics of using cavalry in the civil war in southern Russia. The insurgent army of Makhno, which in October 1919 had up to 28,000 men and 200 machine guns on carts, used them very effectively.
In addition to machine-gun carts in the units, there were separate machine-gun companies and divisions. To quickly achieve local fire superiority, Makhno even had a machine-gun regiment. The tachanka was used both for moving machine guns and for delivering fire strikes directly on the battlefield. The Makhnovists also used carts to transport infantry. At the same time, the general speed of the detachment's movement corresponded to the speed of the trotting cavalry. Thus, Makhno's detachments easily covered up to 100 km a day for several days in a row. So, after a successful breakthrough near Peregonovka in September 1919, Makhno's large forces covered more than 600 km from Uman to Gulyai-Pole in 11 days, capturing the rear garrisons of the whites by surprise. After this glorious raid, machine-gun carts began to spread at the speed of a car in both the white and the red army. In the Red Army, the carts acquired the loudest fame in the First Cavalry Army of S. M. Budyonny.
Rice. 5 Makhnovskaya tachanka
By the beginning of October, the balance of forces and their disposition were as follows: the Volunteer Army had up to 20,000 fighters, the Don Army 48,000, the Caucasian (Kuban and Terskaya) - 30,000. A total of 98,000 fighters. Against the Dobrarmia there were about 40,000 Red men from the 13th and 8th armies. There are about 100,000 people against Donskoy and Kavkazskaya. Front of the warring parties: Kiev - Oryol - Voronezh - Tsaritsyn - Dagestan region. Astrakhan was not captured by White. Despite the mediation of the British, Denikin failed to reach an agreement with the Ukrainian army of Petliura and with the Polish army, and the anti-Bolshevik forces did not join. The Dagestan region was also against the White Army. The red command, realizing where the main danger was, directed the main blow against the Cossacks. The RVS replaced the commander of the Southern Front, Yegoriev, putting in his place the General Staff of Colonel Yegorov. On October 6, the Reds pushed the Cossack units near Voronezh. Under the pressure of the Red cavalry corps, the Cossacks left Voronezh on October 12 and retreated to the western bank of the Don. The Don command asked the Caucasian army to strengthen the right flank of the Don army, and Wrangel promised to go on the offensive to distract Dumenko's cavalry. It was easier for the Caucasian army after the cavalry corps of Budyonny and Dumenko left its front. Fierce battles were also fought on the front of the Dobrarmia, and under the pressure of the 14th, 13th and 8th armies, their resistance was broken, and a slow retreat began. Budenny's corps was reinforced by two infantry divisions, and under their pressure on November 4, Kastornaya was abandoned by the Whites. After that, the flanks of the Dobrarmia and the Don Army could no longer be connected. From November 13, Dobrarmia rolled back to the south, and communication with the units of May-Mayevsky and Dragomirov was lost. The Reds took Kursk and opened the way to Kharkov. After the capture of Kastornaya, Budyonny's corps was ordered to continue to operate at the junction of the Don Army and Don corps. From the side of the 10th and 11th armies, an offensive against Tsaritsyn began, the 9th continued the offensive into the Don territory, and the 8th and 13th main forces acted against the Good Army and partially against the Don units. On November 26, instead of May-Mayevsky, General Wrangel took over the command of the Dobrarmia. The Don units began to surrender their positions and in two days withdrew across the Seversky Donets River. On December 1, the Reds occupied Poltava, on December 3, Kiev, and parts of the Dobrarmia continued to retreat to the south. The Don army continued to melt from losses and typhus. By December 1, the Reds had 63,000 infantry and cavalry against 23,000 Donets.
In December, an event took place that finally turned the tide in favor of the Red Army and had the most negative impact on the fate of the All-Union Soviet of Yugoslavia. In the village of Velikomikhailovka, which now houses the Museum of the First Cavalry, on December 6, as a result of a joint meeting of the members of the RVS of the Southern Front, Yegorov, Stalin, Shchadenko and Voroshilov, with the command of the cavalry corps, order No. 1 was signed on the creation of the First Cavalry Army. The Revolutionary Military Council was put at the head of the army administration, consisting of the Commander of the Cavalry Budenny and members of the Revolutionary Military Council Voroshilov and Shchadenko. The cavalry became a powerful operational-strategic mobile group of forces, which was entrusted with the main task of defeating Denikin's armies by rapidly dividing the White front into two isolated groups along the Novy Oskol-Donbass-Taganrog line, followed by their destruction separately. Those. a deep massive raid of the red cavalry to the Sea of Azov was conceived. The Red Cavalry Corps had previously made deep raids up to Rostov, but they were strategically unsuccessful. The deeply wedged cavalry corps of the Reds were subjected to flank attacks by the White units and returned with heavy losses. The cavalry is a completely different matter. During its formation, the shock cavalry corps of Budyonny was reinforced by several rifle divisions, hundreds of carts, dozens of horse batteries, armored cars, armored trains and airplanes. The cavalry strike with the powerful support of armored trains and machine-gun carts was deadly, and the attached rifle divisions made the defense of the wedged cavalry army extremely resistant to counter-attacks. The attacking and marching formations of the Budyonnovsk cavalry were reliably protected by air reconnaissance and machine-gun carts from sudden flank attacks of the White Cossack cavalry. The Budyonnovsk carts differed from the Makhnov ones, since they were mostly self-made, but the task of machine-gun escort of cavalry at a trot was no less successful. The idea of the cavalry, which the Cossack generals raved about during the World War, found its brilliant embodiment in the hands and heads of the Red Cossacks and effectively earned from the very first days. On December 7, the 4th division of Gorodovikov and the 6th division of Timoshenko defeated the cavalry corps of General Mamantov near Volokonovka. By the end of December 8, after a fierce battle, the army captured Valuyki.
On December 19, the 4th division, with the support of armored trains, defeated the combined equestrian group of General Ulagai. On the night of December 23, the Red Cavalry crossed the Seversky Donets. By December 27, units of the Cavalry had firmly seized the Bakhmut - Popasnaya line. On December 29, by the actions of the 9th and 12th rifle divisions from the front and the enveloping maneuver of the 6th cavalry division, parts of the whites were driven out of Debaltseve. Building on this success, the 11th Cavalry, together with the 9th Infantry Division, captured Gorlovka and Nikitovka on December 30. On December 31, the 6th Cavalry Division, reaching the Alekseevo-Leonovo area, completely defeated three regiments of the Markov Infantry Officer Division. On January 1, 1920, the 11th cavalry and 9th rifle divisions, with the support of armored trains, captured the Ilovaiskaya station and the Amvrosievka area, defeating the Cherkassk division of the whites. On January 6, Taganrog was occupied by the forces of the 9th rifle and 11th cavalry divisions with the assistance of the local Bolshevik underground. The task was completed, the parts of the Armed Forces were cut into 2 parts.
Rice. 6 Cavalry offensive
The Don army retreated from the Don to the south. The benevolent army turned from the army into a corps under the command of General Kutepov, and he passed under the command of the commander of the Don Army, General Sidorin. In the rear of the White Army there was an incredible congestion of carts on unpaved roads and blockages of wagons on the railways. The roads were blocked by abandoned carts with household belongings, sick, wounded Cossacks. Eyewitnesses described that there were not enough words to express in words the deepest tragedy of the fighters, the wounded and sick, who fell into such conditions. This is how the year 1919 ended in the south of Russia deplorably for the whites. And what was the situation in the East in 1919?
At the end of 1918, Dutov's Southwestern Army, formed mainly from the OKW Cossacks, suffered heavy losses and left Orenburg in January 1919. In the conquered territories of the Cossack regions, the Soviet rulers launched brutal repressions. As mentioned above, on January 24, 1919, the secretary of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) Ya. M. Sverdlov signed and sent to the localities a directive on decossackization and destruction of the Cossacks of Russia. It should be said that the Orenburg Provincial Executive Committee did not fully implement this criminal directive, and in March 1919 it was canceled. At the same time, in some Cossack regions, it was used until the end of the civil war, and in this satanic affair Trotsky and his frantic supporters succeeded a lot. The Cossacks suffered enormous damage: human, material and moral.
In the Siberian expanses, the scale and means of waging war against the Reds were greater than the means of the Don and Kuban regions. Mobilization into the army yielded a large number of reinforcements, and the population responded more readily to the call. But along with the mood of the masses to fight against the destructive forces of Bolshevism, a hard political struggle was waged. The main enemies of the white movement in Siberia were not so much the organization of the communists as representatives of the socialists and the liberal community who had relations with the communists, and through the hands of their representatives money came from Moscow for propaganda and the fight against the government of Admiral Kolchak. Back in November 1918, Admiral Kolchak overthrew the Socialist-Revolutionary-Menshevik Directory and proclaimed himself the Supreme Ruler of Russia. After the coup, the Social Revolutionaries declared Kolchak and the white movement an enemy worse than Lenin, stopped fighting the Bolsheviks and began to act against the white rule, organizing strikes, riots, acts of terror and sabotage. In the army and state apparatus of Kolchak and other white governments there were many socialists (Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries) and their supporters, and they themselves were popular among the population of Russia, primarily among the peasantry, therefore the activities of the Socialist-Revolutionaries played an important, largely decisive, role in the defeat of the white movement in Siberia. A conspiracy was slowly but persistently created against the admiral in the army.
Nevertheless, in the spring of 1919, Kolchak's troops launched an offensive. It was successful at first. Dutov's Cossack army cut the road to Turkestan and advanced on Orenburg. Dutov mobilized 36 ages into his regiments and had 42 cavalry, 4 foot regiments and 16 batteries. But in May-June, due to the beginning of field work, the ataman was forced to let go of the Cossacks over 40 years old. This led to a significant decrease in the fighting efficiency of the White Cossacks, the old bearded men firmly held discipline in the hundreds and forced the young Cossacks to observe their allegiance to the oath. In addition, the Red Army launched an offensive along the Trans-Siberian Railway to Chelyabinsk, and the 2nd Cossack Corps of General Akulinin was sent from near Orenburg to the north to repel this offensive. After fierce multi-day battles in August 1919, the Red Army took Verkhneuralsk and Troitsk and cut off Dutov's White Cossack army from the main forces of Kolchak. The White Cossack units rolled to the southeast, but some of the Cossacks did not want to leave their homes, and in the region of Orsk and Aktyubinsk, a mass surrender of the Cossacks began. The surrendered White Cossacks and officers were placed in the Totsk, Verkhneuralsk and Miass camps, where they were thoroughly checked and filtered. Many were never released, and from those who wanted to earn the forgiveness of the new government, units of the Red Cossacks were formed, the cavalry corps N. D. Kashirin and the cavalry division of N. D. Tomina. Residents of Orenburg replenished the Cavalry of S. M. Budyonny and fought against the army of Denikin, Wrangel, Makhno and the White Poles.
In September-October 1919, a decisive battle took place between the Whites and the Reds between the rivers Tobol and Ishim. As on other fronts, the whites, being inferior to the enemy in strength and means, were defeated. After which the front collapsed and the remnants of Kolchak's army retreated deep into Siberia. During this retreat, the Kolchak troops completed the Great Siberian Ice Campaign, as a result of which the Kolchak troops retreated from Western Siberia to Eastern Siberia, thereby overcoming more than 2000 kilometers and avoiding encirclement. Kolchak was characterized by a reluctance to delve deeply into political issues. He sincerely hoped that under the banner of the struggle against Bolshevism he would be able to unite the most diverse political forces and create a new solid state power. And at this time, the Social Revolutionaries organized a number of mutinies in the rear of Kolchak, as a result of one of them they managed to capture Irkutsk. Power in the city was taken by the Socialist-Revolutionary Political Center, to which on January 15 the Czechoslovakians, among whom there were strong pro-Socialist-Revolutionary sentiments and had no desire to fight, gave out Admiral Kolchak, who was under their protection.
After the withdrawal of Kolchak's army across the Tobol River, parts of the Orenburg and Ural Cossacks on the Turkestan front were thrown back into the sandy, desert lands, and their territories were occupied by the Reds. The front of the Baltic countries was passive, and only on the outskirts of Petrograd was the North-Western army of General Yudenich fighting. In November 1919, near Kokchetav, the Dutov army was defeated again, the most irreconcilable Cossacks in the amount of 6-7 thousand with their families went with the chieftain to China, and most surrendered. The difficulties of the journey to China were aggravated by the cruelty of the former ataman of the Siberian Cossacks B. V. Annenkova. Ataman Annenkov not only did not help the Orenburg residents who came to Semirechye, but at the very border he dealt with thousands of desperate villagers and their families. Just before the border, he invited those who did not want to part with their native land to return to Soviet Russia. There were about two thousand of them. Annenkov wished them a good journey and pointed out the meeting place. But it was an insidious ruse. The Cossacks gathered in the clearing were hit by machine guns. The fleeing people were chopped off by the horsemen of Annenko. A terrible massacre was arranged over women and children. Such zoological cruelty speaks of the savagery of the Annenkovites and similar "fighters" for the white idea, their transformation into extremely embittered sadistic Satanists. Having set as their goal the struggle for Orthodox Russia against the atheist communists, many white warriors themselves have sunk to the cruelty of primitive barbarians. Any war hardens people, but civil, fratricidal war is especially corrupting. That is why the Patriarch of All Russia Tikhon did not give his blessing to the White Army.
The anti-people civil war was started by both sides against the will of the clergy and statesmen and was led from the white side by the generals Kornilov, Denikin, Alekseev, who vilely betrayed the oath of the Tsar and the state. There is nothing to say about the other side. Civil war inevitably dooms the state to devastation and defeat, and the people participating in it to moral degradation, savagery and lack of spirituality. In total, about 100 thousand refugees left Orenburg, fearing reprisals from the Reds. About 20 thousand White Cossacks with their families crossed the border with China. Of these, Ataman Dutov was able to assemble a combat-ready detachment of about 6 thousand people in Suidun, and he prepared military actions against Soviet Russia. The Chekists decided to end this threat. A Kazakh of noble origin, Kasym Khan Chanyshev, was involved in the operation, allegedly preparing an uprising in eastern Kazakhstan. During the operation, Ataman Dutov was treacherously killed. So the struggle of the OKW Cossacks with the Bolsheviks ended ingloriously.
The struggle in 1919 on the territory of the Ural Cossack army was no less stubborn and fierce. The Ural White Cossacks retreated under pressure from the well-armed, reinforced and full-blooded 25th Infantry Division, whose commander was a talented, skillful and brave warrior V. I. Chapaev. Despite the successful raid of the White Cossack detachment on the division headquarters in Lbischensk, which ended in the complete defeat of the headquarters and the death of the legendary commander, the position of the White Cossacks was terrible. Their retreat continued, and an epidemic of typhus and dysentery broke out among them and the refugees. People died like flies. In response to M. V. Frunze's most implacable went south along the Caspian Sea. In this hardest campaign, most were killed. Of those who reached Tehran, some entered the service in the Persian division, some were sent to Vladivostok, then ended up in China. After some time, some of the Cossack emigrants, headed by the ataman V. S. Tolstov moved to Australia. Thus ended the great drama of the glorious Ural Cossack army.
Thus, 1919 ended disastrously for the whites. The allies abandoned the white movement and were busy with the post-war world arrangement, and simply divided the booty. And she was big. 3 mighty empires collapsed: German, Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian. The former Russian Empire burned down on a slow fire, and in this flame a new mighty Red Empire was born in agony. The new year 1920 began, and with it the agony of the white movement. The Red leaders have already seen victory, and they again smelled the smell of world revolution. But that's a completely different story.
