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The Whites in the Russian Civil War

Дата публикации: 04 сентября 2007
Публикатор: Научная библиотека Порталус
Рубрика: RUSSIA (TOPICS) - Soviet Russia (1917-53) →
Источник: (c) http://russia.by
Номер публикации: №1188914618


Did the Whites have any chance of winning the Russian Civil War?

Viewpoint: Yes. The Whites were clearly superior on the battlefield, and with better leadership they could well have won the war.

Viewpoint: No. Though White forces were superior as soldiers, they were outnumbered ten to one by the Reds. The White factions were hopelessly divided and failed to muster popular support.

_______________________

The Bolshevik coup of October 1917 produced determined opponents. The rise of a radical socialist regime confronted the elites of the old order, challenging their role in government and society, as well as their existence. Within only a few weeks, organized armed opposition began to take form, plunging Russia into a civil war that the Bolsheviks eventually won.
Known collectively as the "Whites," from the traditional color of the flag of the monarchy, disparate groups formed armies, solicited support from foreign governments, and attempted to mobilize the population against "Red" Bolshevik rule. Led by experienced officers and often facing undisciplined, ragtag opponents, the Whites appeared at several points to have a chance of winning. Some scholars believe that if certain controllable factors had been handled differently, a White victory might have been possible. White forces did, after all, come close to capturing both Moscow and Petrograd--centers of Red power--in 1919. Yet, the Whites were geographically separated, unable to secure the support of the overwhelming peasant population of Russia, incapable of gaining long-term and active foreign support, and unwilling to work with the independence-minded nationalities of the Russian Empire. These factors have led many scholars to conclude that the Whites were doomed to defeat by their better-organized and more-confident Red opponents.



Viewpoint: Yes. The Whites were clearly superior on the battlefield, and with better leadership they could well have won the war.

As the U.S. loss to North Vietnam in 1975 and the Soviet Union defeat by Afghan rebels in 1989 proved, victory does not always go to the side with the bigger army and more resources. While no army can win if it is not adequately equipped, plenty of well-equipped armies have lost wars. Victory depends, above all, on proper leadership and political direction. The outcome of the Russian Civil War was uncertain from the time of the Bolshevik coup in October 1917 until its last months in winter 1920-1921. The White armies had the human expertise and the material resources to achieve victory. As frequently happens in conflict, however, human errors and luck determined the outcome. The Whites had a decent chance of winning the Russian Civil War until the end of 1919. By New Year's Day 1920, however, there was little realistic hope of success.

Like the Bolshevik Revolution, the Russian Civil War was fought by relatively small factions, while the vast Russian masses remained relatively passive. Never was there a question of which side was more representative of the aspirations of the Russian people. The Civil War was essentially a war over which Russia would succeed Imperial Russia. The Bolsheviks had a clear vision of a Marxist dictatorship, whereas the Whites issued amorphous calls to hand Russia over to a Constituent Assembly or talked about a vague authoritarian regime. While the Whites envisioned assuming dictatorial powers briefly and then handing power over to the Constituent Assembly, they failed to adopt the policies that were necessary to ensure the success of this plan. In particular, they did not establish complete political and logistical control over the territories nominally under their command. In southern Russia, under the leadership of General Anton Denikin, and in Siberia, under the leadership of Admiral Aleksandr Kolchak, the White Armies did not establish regular control over broad territories that they expected to use as geographic bases for their leadership. This lapse had especially serious consequences for Kolchak, whose authority melted away in the vast recesses of Siberia. Both leaders failed to control their subordinates. The ensuing corruption and disorganization helped to undermine the value of the Whites' territories, neither of which produced as much material or human resources as it could have. The result was serious operational and supply problems, which accelerated the collapse of both fronts in the latter half of 1919.

Their inability to create a useful power base in the White-held territories of southern Russia and Siberia made the Whites dependent on foreign assistance. One source of such assistance was the Czech Legion, without whose efforts there would have been no hope at all for the Whites in Siberia. The Czech Legion comprised about thirty-five thousand Czechs and Slovaks who had been mustered by the tsarist army from the ranks of Austro-Hungarian prisoners of war to fight against the Habsburgs. Finding itself stranded in Russia at the outbreak of the Russian Revolution, the Czech Legion had no home to return to until the end of World War I in November 1918, for the Habsburgs were still in power. The Legion fought and held territory in Russia, with the ultimate goal of reaching the Pacific and then sailing to Europe to fight on the Western Front. They held the extremely significant Trans-Siberian Railroad, the only modern link between the Pacific coast and the Russian heartland. Another source of foreign aid was the Imperial German Army, which sent a division under General Count Rüdiger von der Goltz to help a tsarist general, Baron Carl Gustaf Mannerheim, in his successful fight to establish an independent Finland in 1917-1918. The British beachheads at Arkhangelsk and Murmansk, in northern Russia, established during World War I to help supply the tsar's war effort, were converted into bases to threaten the Bolsheviks. Other Western Allies also decided to intervene in the Civil War. By the end of 1918 some fifteen allied nations had developed a stake in Russia. While their motivations varied, there was the possibility of real support for the Whites. For example, in addition to sending ammunition and funding, the British provided the Whites in Siberia and southern Russia with aircraft and armor and--most important--the manpower to operate them in the field. They also sent so-called advisers, who functioned as infantry alongside White troops. Because it held the Baltic and Black Seas, the British Royal Navy was able (with French help in the Black Sea) to serve as a floating artillery base and transportation unit for the Whites operating in the region, and in 1919 British naval units attacked the Bolshevik-controlled Russian fleet at its main port, Kronstadt.

Foreign assistance meant little, however, because the White leadership did not have the political and strategic vision to put it to good use. Not only did Kolchak and Denikin lack solid control over the territories they held, but they also were unable to develop trust and the coordination of efforts they needed to operate with a unified strategy. Most notable was their failure to link the territories they held. After Denikin's seizure of Tsaritsyn (later Stalingrad, now Volgograd) in June 1919, he should have attacked eastward to link up with Kolchak's Siberian territories, as his subordinate (and successor) General Baron Pyotr Wrangel argued. Instead, however, Denikin was fixated on seizing the industrial Donets basin with an eye on marching north on Moscow. Had Denikin linked up with Kolchak, the Whites would have controlled a continuous strip of territory stretching from the western boundaries of Russia to the Pacific, which would have been a much stronger basis for an attack on Moscow and the rest of the Red heartland. In any event, Denikin forces succeeded in reaching Orel, within 250 miles of Moscow, before the offensive stalled, while Kolchak's forces approached Kazan, a long distance away from both Denikin and his headquarters at Omsk.

When it came to attacking, the White Armies were more effective than the Bolsheviks. From the outset, the Whites were essentially a military movement. While legend has it that the Russian military was inept and therefore collapsed during World War I, the truth is much more complex. Like Prussia in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, tsarist Russia was in essence "an army with a state behind it." During World War I, the Russian state was unable to support its army, but the tsar's armed forces nevertheless had some excellent leadership. Although it was heavily dominated by the aristocracy, the Russian Imperial Army could and did promote officers based on their talent. Denikin was of peasant origin, as was one of the greatest Russian generals of the war, Lavr Kornilov, who had risen from the ranks to be a low-ranking officer before leaving the army to become a provincial clerk. Returning to active service during World War I, he became a division commander and a celebrated military hero after escaping from Austro-Hungarian captivity. In July-August 1917 he served the Provisional Government as army commander in chief. Kornilov's last and greatest military exploit was the creation of the White Army in southern Russia from just four thousand poorly armed and demoralized anti-Bolshevik troops who gathered there in early 1918. His death in battle in April 1918 deprived the Whites of his talents. Other exceptional officers included Mannerheim, who, despite having been an aide-de-camp and shooting companion of the tsar, led Finnish troops in their successful war of independence against the Russians, and Wrangel, who demonstrated uncanny battlefield prowess in the Civil War, including the capture of Tsaritsyn in June 1918. On a purely operational level, the Whites repeatedly outclassed the Red Army and frequently demolished larger Red formations. The battlefield history of the war includes case after case of the Whites' incredible bravery and determination in the face of overwhelming odds. In comparison to the Whites, the Reds had few outstanding military talents and used terror as a recruiting tactic, which did not help to create imaginative and inspiring leadership in the Red Army. Indeed, one of their major ways of drafting military expertise was to press tsarist officers into service while holding their families hostage.

Unfortunately for the White armies, operational proficiency did not translate into clear political or strategic vision. This shortcoming was especially pronounced in Denikin. Not only did he fail to link up with Kolchak, but he did not institute a viable government in territories under his control. He also resisted accepting aid from the nationalities of the Russian Empire and from powerful foreign allies--a failing in which he was not alone. Only Wrangel eventually showed the willingness to establish an anti-Bolshevik alliance, with the Poles, but in 1920, when it was too late and the Whites held just the Crimea. Denikin and the other White generals stubbornly held to the position that they were fighting for the restoration of Imperial Russian territory. At the same time they believed themselves still bound to continue the war against Germany, even after the Bolsheviks concluded the separate peace at Brest-Litovsk in March 1918 and even though the Germans happily supported Mannerheim, the strongly anti-Bolshevik Ukrainian leader Pavlo Skoropadsky (another former tsarist general and aide-de-camp of Tsar Nicholas II), the separatist governments of the Baltic States, the Menshevik regime that came to power in Georgia, and the Don Cossacks. It would have been far wiser for the ethnic Russian Whites to create a coalition of formerly subject nationalities under White Russian leadership. Had they formed a working "army of nations" made up of Polish, Finnish, Baltic, Ukrainian, Cossack, and Caucasian troops, it would have been easy to crush the Red Army. There was no shortage of victories over the Reds by various armies--Iudenich's combined Estonian and White Russian army even seized the suburbs of Petrograd in October 1919--but the Whites never attempted a coordinated strategy to strangle the Bolsheviks. Nevertheless, Poland, Finland, and the Baltic States secured their independence by defeating Red campaigns against them, while Ukraine, the Cossack hosts, and the new states of the Caucasus region had to be conquered by the Reds in sustained fighting.

In the Russian Civil War, material circumstances did offer the Red Army some advantages. The Red Army held a single territory and thus had valuable interior lines of communication, which enabled the Reds to marshal and deploy troops and resources faster than their opponents. But the Reds lacked the professional leadership of the Whites. The Whites, however, failed because of human errors of imagination and judgment. Without solid rule over the territories they held, they were not only unable to exploit those territories effectively, but they also appeared weak to foreign observers, whose aid was essential for the White cause. A second serious problem was the Whites' failure to create a politically or geographically unified entity, both of which were clearly in their grasp. Finally, they refused to use emergent anti-Bolshevik nationalism or German support to their own advantage. It is entirely possible that with different individuals in key positions of power, things would have worked out differently for the Whites. Kornilov, for example, was known to have been especially impressed with Wrangel's abilities. Had he not been killed, he and Wrangel together might have provided a formidable combination of excellent leadership and vision; such a turn might well have produced remarkably different results.

-- Phil Giltner, Albany Academy


Viewpoint: No. Though White forces were superior as soldiers, they were outnumbered ten to one by the Reds. The White factions were hopelessly divided and failed to muster popular support.

Many factors contributed to the failure of the Whites to win the Russian Civil War. While they were indeed supported by the Allies of World War I, the Whites were outnumbered almost ten to one by the Red Army. Less ruthless than their enemies, the Whites were too divided among themselves and had little popular support. Their forces were dispersed into too many parts to form an effective whole, and they had nothing to offer Russian workers or peasants in return for their support. Approximately 80 percent of peasants conscripted into the White Armies ended up deserting.

In the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, signed in March 1918, the new Bolshevik government of Russia gave up huge portions of the tsar's empire to German control, galvanizing into action many Russians who were already unhappy with the Bolsheviks. The upper echelons of the tsar's officer corps, already opposed to socialist government, were enraged at seeing large parts of their country handed over to the enemy as a result of Bolshevik diplomatic mismanagement.

The only factor the Whites had in their favor initially was the inexperience of their foe; the Red Army had not yet been established, and at this stage there was no indication that the Bolsheviks could mount an effective military defense against a determined foe. It was one thing to take to barricades and parade in the streets, but another to fight against trained officers and men. One of the most cohesive groups in the White forces was the Czech Legion, made up of former prisoners of war from the Austro-Hungarian army. An effective military force, they romped across Siberia and the Urals more or less at will in the early stages of the conflict. The three main White Russian Armies were led by General Anton Denikin in the south, General Nikolai Iudenich in the northwest, and Admiral Aleksandr Kolchak in the east. Their initial successes in making advances toward Moscow and Petrograd in 1919 seemed proof of their professional superiority to the Reds. In fact, these armies were merely taking advantage of fortunate circumstances; the bulk of Red forces were preoccupied with the Polish War and had not yet been reorganized in a thorough way by the Bolshevik war commissar, Lev Trotsky. The initial decision of the Allied forces to offer direct aid to the White forces also seemed to give them the advantage over their opponents. Yet, the White forces were not, generally speaking, the trained professional group of former tsarist soldiers that many outside Russia imagined them to be. While the leadership was undoubtedly professional, conscripts formed an integral (indeed, the most essential) part of the troops.

Especially in a civil war, military successes, when not coupled with an alternative political message to captivate the masses, can be difficult to maintain over time. The leaders of the three White forces never effectively cooperated with each other because they were too caught up in personal rivalries and differences of opinion over the shape of a future, post-Bolshevik Russia. While struggling, often unsuccessfully, to maintain an outwardly positive face for the Allies, the Whites also had little to offer the Russian people. Many (but not all) of the White officers were from the upper classes and opposed all but the most limited agricultural land reform--the issue that, in addition to Russian withdrawal from World War I, the Bolsheviks had used to gain the support of the vast Russian peasant class. The White movement never offered a clear or compelling reason why any peasant should be willing to fight and perhaps die for a cause that would return land to the gentry. The White military leaders were unaccustomed to dealing with social and political questions, so it is perhaps understandable that they were never able to agree to a coherent policy of land reform; yet, this issue was the thing that mattered most to the peasantry. Peasants were also alienated by the Whites' initial desire to resume the war against Germany. Even after the defeat of Germany by the remaining Allies, this policy permanently labeled the White leadership as truly out of touch with the needs and desires of common Russians.

The peasants' discontent over the demands placed on them by the Bolsheviks manifested itself in a series of peasant rebellions, not in their support for the White cause, with which they had no sympathy. Furthermore, though the Bolsheviks' policy of War Communism--which included conscription and forced labor--was unpopular with the peasant class, they welcomed the Reds' promise of land reform. The Whites also used harsh measures, including official terror, but offered its peasant soldiers only a return to the past. This difference between the two sides may well explain the high desertion rates in the White forces, with the deserters often ending up in the Red Army.

The Czech Legion was effective in its efforts for the Whites' cause, but a force of its size could last for only a limited time while more or less living off the land, without supply links to the remainder of the forces. Furthermore, they were more like mercenaries than an integral component of the White cause. The main goal of the Czech Legion had nothing to do with Russia; the Czechs wanted to fight their way out of Russia and secure transportation to the Western Front, where they hoped to fight with the Allies for the independence of their homeland.

The one major factor that might have given the Whites some hope for success--the intervention of the Allied powers--turned out to be inadequate. While Winston Churchill was indeed calling for the Bolshevik infant to be strangled in its cradle, his enthusiasm for continuing to fight after the end of World War I was a minority position. Having just suffered the horrors of years of modern trench warfare, the people of the Allied nations had no desire to see their governments become embroiled in yet another military conflict. Consequently, the Allies' involvement in the Russian Civil War was limited. While American troops were providing aid to the Whites, President Woodrow Wilson was attempting (half heartedly and with no success) to mediate between the warring parties. It was clear to all, especially to the Bolshevik leadership, that the Allied will to remain involved was diminishing with each passing day and that victory was not in sight.

For the Whites, the combination of weakness of command, unpopularity, and lack of critical support from abroad became most evident in the final phase of the Civil War. General Baron Pyotr Wrangel, who had gathered the remnants of Denikin's armies, had to fortify his position in the Crimea. Without any hope that aid would come from elsewhere, he concentrated his efforts on evacuating survivors and refugees to safe havens. They were taken under Allied protection to Constantinople, where they began new and often unpleasant lives as émigrés. Ukraine, in which territory the Crimea lay, should have provided fertile ground for developing a peasant or nationalist base to combat the Red Army, which was primarily composed of Great Russians (that is, individuals from Russia proper, as opposed to Ukrainians, so-called Little Russians), Belorussians, or any of the other nationalities living within the boundaries of the old tsarist empire. But again the White forces demonstrated an inability to offer a political outlet for the people they were trying to enlist. Seeing no real hope for land reform by the Whites, Ukrainian peasants backed either the Reds or the forces of the anarchist Nestor Makhno. Denikin and Wrangel also opposed giving autonomy to nationalities, even when Pavlo Skoropadsky, a conservative tsarist general sympathetic to the Whites' cause, led the briefly independent nation-state of Ukraine in 1918. These uncompromising attitudes on the national question frustrated the Whites' attempts to gain support from the minorities of the Russian Empire. The failure of the White forces during the Russian Civil War was almost guaranteed from the beginning of the conflict.

-- Vasilis Vourkoutiotis, University of Ottawa


DENIKIN'S PROCLAMATION

This decree was issued by General Anton Denikin, leader of White forces in southern Russia:

In connection with my order No. 175 of this year, I order the Special Conference to adopt as the basis of its activity the following positions:

1. United, Great, Indivisible Russia. Defense of the faith. Establishment of order. Reconstruction of the productive forces of the country and the national economy. Raising labor productivity.

2. Struggle with bolshevism to the end.

3. Military dictatorship. Reject all pressure from political parties. Punish all opposition to authority, both from the right and from the left. The question of the form of rule is a matter for the future. The Russian people will establish supreme authority without pressure and without it being imposed. Unity with the people. . . .

4. Foreign policy: only a national Russian policy. Without paying attention to the vacillations which sometimes arise on the Russian question among our Allies, side with them. Because another combination is morally inadmissable and unrealizable in practice. . . .

5. All forces and all resources for the army, for the struggle and for victory. . . .

6. Internal policy: Manifestation of solicitude for the population without distinction. Continue work on the agrarian and labor law in the spirit of my declaration; also the law of the zemstvo. Assist social organizations whose purpose is the development of the national economy and the amelioration of economic conditions (co-operatives, trade unions, etc.). . . .

7. Restore the morale of the front and the military rear by the work of specially appointed generals with wide powers, by field courts martial and by the use of extreme repressive measures. Violently purge counter-intelligence and the criminal investigation department, put into them legally trained (refugee) personnel.

8. Strengthen the ruble, improve transport and production chiefly for state defense. . . .

9. The temporary militarization of water transport to use it fully for the war; not destroying, however, the commercial industrial machine.

10. Alleviate the position of the bureaucracy and the families of officials at the front by partial transfer to allowances in kind (through the efforts of the Board of Provisions and the Department of Military Supplies). . . .

11. Propaganda is to serve exclusively the direct purpose of popularizing the ideas being advanced by authority, the unmasking of the essence of bolshevism, the raising of popular self-consciousness and will for the struggle with anarchy.

Taganrog, 14 December 1919

Source: Martin McCauley, ed., The Russian Revolution and the Soviet State 1917-1921: Documents (London: Macmillan, 1975), pp. 173-175.

FURTHER READINGS


References


Orlando Figes, A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891-1924 (New York: Viking, 1997).

W. Bruce Lincoln, Red Victory: A History of the Russian Civil War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989).

Richard Luckett, The White Generals. An Account of the White Movement and the Russian Civil War (New York: Viking, 1971).

Evan Mawdsley, The Russian Civil War (Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1987).

Robert Service, The Russian Revolution 1900-1927 (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press International, 1986).

Rex A. Wade, The Russian Revolution, 1917 (Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

Carl Watts, "The Russian Civil War: Did the Reds Win or the Whites Lose the War?" Modern History Review, 11 (2000): 6.

Опубликовано на Порталусе 04 сентября 2007 года

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