The Russian Civil War was a long and bloody conflict fought on three main fronts the eastern, southern, and northwestern—and can, chronologically, be roughly divided into three periods. The first spanned from the October Revolution to the Russian-German armistice at Brest-Litovsk on March 3, 1918; the second, from March to November 1919; and the third and final period, which lasted from December 1919 to November 1920, the year in which the last White Army, that of General Pyotr Nikolaevich Wrangel (1878–1928), was defeated and forced to abandon its last stronghold in the Crimea, where it had barricaded itself the previous spring. Russian “White” officers and soldiers. In the background, a British-made Mark tank. During the conflict, England and France supplied arms to the White Russian armies. In the spring of 1920, besieged in the Crimea, the “White Baron” Pyotr Wrangel, commanding the last army still capable of fighting, did everything possible to regroup his now-weakened forces [1]. Indeed, as the English historian W. H. Chamberlin wrote, “it is only right to emphasize Wrangel’s exceptional organizational and military abilities.
Tsar Nicholas II.
He possessed more perseverance than Denikin and more political acumen than Kolchak. And while he harbored no illusions about the final outcome of such an unequal struggle, he was able to instill courage and determination in his men, who were demoralized by so many defeats and reduced to fighting with a growing shortage of war materials and equipment.” At first (even though he was virtually abandoned by England and France, which preferred, for diplomatic reasons, to stay out of the great conflict between the Reds and the Whites [2], his efforts yielded excellent and unexpected results: in June 1920, Wrangel marched north, managing to block and repel General Frunze’s advancing army, pursuing it all the way to the Dnieper River. But the aforementioned peace treaty signed in the meantime between Poland and the Bolshevik government, and the Treaty of Tartu (October 14) between the Bolshevik government and Finland (which became independent), allowed the Reds to throw an enormous number of divisions—amounting to nearly 500,000 soldiers [3] against the last counterrevolutionary general. At this point, Wrangel withdrew all his troops (including reserves) to southern Taurida and the Crimea. This force consisted of 23,070 infantrymen (short on food, ammunition, and medical supplies), 11,795 light cavalrymen supported by just over 200 howitzers and field guns, 1,663 machine guns, 14 armored and armed trains, 45 armored cars and French Renault and British Tank vehicles, and 42 combat aircraft, also of Anglo-French manufacture. It should be noted, however, that the quality of the men and equipment—as W. Bruce Lincoln reports had deteriorated after its early victories in northern Taurida. “Armored cars, tanks, and aircraft were in disastrous condition,” and even more seriously during the most recent battles, the best officers, including the cavalry commander, Babev, had fallen in action.
General Wrangel.
On September 27, General Frunze arrived in Kharkiv to assume command of the Southern Front. “Fresh from a series of victories he had won in Siberia and Turkestan,[4] Frunze was not a man to settle for anything less than total victory: Wrangel had to be annihilated,” Lincoln reminds us. For the final attack, Frunze mobilized some 105,000 well-armed and well-trained infantrymen and light cavalry, 400 cannons and howitzers, over 3,500 machine guns, and a number of armored trains, armored cars, tanks, and aircraft that was only slightly greater than that of the enemy but of far superior quality. For the final attack, Frunze was also able to draw on the forces of two skilled generals: Semen Mikhailovich Budyonny (1883–1973) (commander of the cavalry, who had recently returned from the Polish front following the peace between Moscow and Warsaw) and Vasily Blücher (1889–1938), who, with his legendary 51st Division, had previously defeated Admiral Kolchak. Wrangel’s last-ditch attempt to hold at least a portion of northern Taurida (rich in grain) as a bulwark for the Perekop defensive line (a narrow strip of land connecting southern Taurida to the Crimea) failed under pressure from the Red Army. As Lincoln noted: “By the end of February, Frunze had deployed the 4th, 6th, and 13th Infantry Armies and the 1st and 2nd Cavalry Armies—supported by Makhno’s partisans—in a wide semicircle stretching from Kherson to the mouth of the Dnieper, on its western flank, to Nogajsk on the Sea of Azov, about 400 kilometers to the east.” This deployment resulted in the near-encirclement of Wrangel’s entire army, which now had its back to the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov.
General Denikin.
However, Frunze’s initial attempts to break through in order to occupy all of Taurida and overcome the White Army’s main defensive line on the Perekop Isthmus proved disastrous due to the White units’ stubborn resistance. “I am astounded by the enormous energy with which the enemy is resisting,” Frunze reported to Moscow. “There is no doubt that the enemy is fighting more valiantly and tenaciously than any other army would have.” In fact, the Whites put up fierce resistance even at the strategic Salkovo Pass—the linchpin of the Perekop defensive line—but were ultimately forced to retreat. It was at that point that Wrangel decided to withdraw the last units left in Taurida to delay Frunze’s advance. The attempt failed: overrun by the Red Army, thousands of White soldiers were surrounded and taken prisoner, not to mention the many who fell on the battlefield. The complete occupation of Taurida also cost Wrangel the loss of 36,000 metric tons of precious grain stored in the warehouses of Melitopol and Genicesk.
General Frunze.
The entire White Army was now confined to the Crimean Peninsula, awaiting the final showdown. By the end of the first week of November, Frunze had amassed 180,771 men, supported by nearly 3,000 machine guns, 600 artillery pieces, 23 armored trains, and dozens of tanks and reconnaissance aircraft. This was a force that Wrangel would have to face with just 26,000 front-line troops and 16,000 in reserve. Frunze decided to launch the main attack against the so-called “Turkish Wall” (built centuries earlier by the Ottomans on the Perekop Isthmus), along which Wrangel had positioned his best forces—namely, the unified 1st and 2nd Armies, under the command of the excellent General Kutepov. On November 5, Bljucher’s 51st Division launched the assault, supported by Budennyi’s cavalry, the entire 4th Red Army, and the forces of the anarchist Makhno. And on the 9th, after four bitter battles that cost Kutepov 60% of his forces, Frunze finally managed to break through the lines set up by Wrangel, who, in the meantime, had already organized the evacuation from Crimea by sea with great calm and foresight. On November 11, Wrangel ordered all civilians and soldiers (protected by rearguard units under Kutepov’s command) to proceed to the embarkation ports he had already designated, namely Yevpatoria, Sevastopol, Yalta, Feodosia, and Kerch. The evacuation proceeded with the utmost order (approximately 146,000 soldiers and civilians were embarked aboard 126 ships). And in the late afternoon of November 17, upon receiving word that the operation had been completed, Wrangel boarded the cruiser General Kornilov, which would take him into exile in Constantinople.
The well-planned retreat also allowed for the safe evacuation of the Russian Black Sea Fleet (or Wrangel’s Fleet) [5], which was subsequently interned at Bizerte. During the final stages of the evacuation of the White troops, nearly all civilians tried by every means to flee the Crimea, fearing reprisals from the Bolsheviks. This fear was more than justified, considering that between November 20 and the end of December 1920, the vanguard units of the Red Army shot or hanged approximately 50,000 people. On November 26, in the port area of Sevastopol, Cheka units arrested and executed over 700 dockworkers, factory workers, officials, and an unknown number of civilians, accused of helping the White troops board Wrangel’s ships.
Cossacks (White Army).
On November 30, the Sevastopol Revolutionary Committee announced the “elimination of 1,836 dangerous reactionary bandits”, the first in a long series. Chamberlin explains it this way: “Foremost among the White generals, Wrangel had inherited a wreck of an army, but he was able to forge it into a fighting force that dealt the Reds some severe blows. Wrangel could not save that old Russia of which he had become the champion and representative, but his military activity which kept a large number of Communist troops tied up in Ukraine and the Kuban was certainly not the only reason why the Red Army lacked, before Warsaw, that final reserve of energy that would have created a Soviet Poland and extended Bolshevism far beyond Russia’s borders. Viewed from this perspective, the outcome of the White movement, personified by Wrangel, was a stroke of luck for Poland and perhaps for other newly formed states that avoided being overrun by a Soviet government intent (as Trotsky planned, Ed.) to invade not only Poland and the Baltic States but also Germany, Romania, and Hungary” and to spread the Bolshevik cause all the way to the Atlantic.
The Wrangel Fleet in Black Sea.
NOTES:
[1] What made the situation of the last White Army in Crimea even more critical was the fact that Wrangel did not enjoy the support of the Ukrainian people, for the same reasons that had led to the defeat of Kolchak, Denikin, and Yudenich: the distrust of the peasants and the small size of the middle classes, which could have constituted a decisive social base; and this despite the fact that Wrangel, having learned from the defeat of the other White generals, had promised the peasants a radical agrarian reform at the expense of the large landowners.
[2] The French—who had invested large sums of capital in Russia before and during World War I—had staked almost everything on General Pilsudski’s Poland, but after Pilsudski’s victory at Warsaw, they essentially lost interest in Wrangel’s fate, distancing themselves from the White cause, which was now considered lost. In addition, in 1919, their naval squadron, stationed in Odessa to support a small transalpine expeditionary force (5,000 men, mostly Senegalese and Algerians) that was fighting alongside the Whites (with the support of about 700 Greek soldiers), the Whites, had been shaken by mutinies among the crews of the battleships *France* and *Jean Bart*. This event prompted the French government to order their immediate repatriation for fear of a possible Bolshevik contagion.
[3] In March 1918, the Red Army numbered 100,800 soldiers: a force that rose to 306,000 men in May 1918; to 1,000,000 in February 1919; in January 1920 to 3,000,000, and in October 1920 to as many as 5,498,000 men. It should be noted that this powerful army included in its ranks over 40,000 officers who had served under Nicholas II: a fact that did not sit well with many Bolsheviks, but which Trotsky endorsed and enforced with unyielding determination and shrewdness.
[4] From late 1918 through most of 1919, through a shrewd and ambiguous policy, Lenin fostered the emergence in Central Asia of “independent” Muslim government institutions—which were, in fact, under his control—such as the Provisional Government Committee and the Tashkent Soviet of Workers’ and Peasants’ Deputies. Suddenly, on February 22, 1918, in a surprise attack, the important center of Khokand was attacked and militarily occupied by the Red Army, supported by units of the Armenian militia. Caught off guard, the Muslim patriots—disorganized and poorly armed—were quickly overwhelmed and forced to surrender; this did not prevent the Bolsheviks from physically eliminating all members of the local Muslim government and a large portion of the civilian population. Thereafter, Lenin sent a strong contingent of the Red Army to Turkestan under the command of General Mikhail Frunze, who, taking advantage of the substantial weakness of the Basmachi armed bands (the Basmachi were a Turkic-speaking people of Russian Turkestan), quickly conquered the great oasis of Khiva and many other centers, eliminating hundreds of Islamic leaders and imposing Bolshevik rule through the Soviets. After the fall of the Khokand region, the Muslims retreated to the stronghold of Dushanbe and into the Pamir Mountains, continuing to harass the Bolshevik forces stationed in Tashkent. The uprising continued even after the formation of the Soviet Union and was not quelled until 1931.
[5] Initially, before the Revolution, the Russian Black Sea Fleet, under the command of Rear Admiral Mikhail Alexandrovich Kedrov, consisted of the battleships General Alekseyev and Georgii Pobedonosets; the cruisers General Kornilov and Almaz; the destroyers Kapitan Saken, Bespokoiny, Derzky, Gnevny, Pylkiy, Pospeshny, Schastlivy, Tserigo, Zharkiy, Zvonkiy, and Zorkiy; the submarines: Tyulen, Burevestnik, AG 22, and Utka; and the patrol boats and torpedo boats: Vsadnik, Dzhigit, Gaidamak, Strazh, and Grozny. Subsequently, in February 1921, the remaining Russian warships were interned at Bizerte, under the command of Rear Admiral Mikhail Berens. These were just a few, by then worn-out vessels: the battleship Volya, the very old battleship Georgii Pobiedonosetz, the cruisers Ochakov and Almaz, plus seven destroyers, submarines, and gunboats. The fate of these ships was decidedly bitter. In Bizerte, they remained inactive for years. It should be noted that the 126 ships that left the Crimea made their first stop in Constantinople to disembark the bulk of Wrangel’s soldiers and many civilians. After enduring a grueling journey (food and even drinking water were in short supply aboard the vessels), the survivors were reduced to selling their wedding rings to Greek and Armenian merchants in exchange for a bowl of water or a piece of bread. As maritime historian Mario Veronesi aptly describes, “on the docks, elderly ladies-in-waiting of the Empress Dowager, their heads shaved to ward off lice, prayed before the family icons.” In the streets of Galata, there were so many Russian soldiers that they resembled an occupying army. They were eventually taken in by the French army camps on Lemnos, at Catalca, and along the shores of the Dardanelles.” Once their odyssey was over, many soldiers and civilians emigrated to Greece and Western Europe, while a number of the soldiers chose to enlist in the French Foreign Legion. Except for the veterans of a Cossack brigade who moved to Persia, joining the local Persian Cossack Brigade led by Colonel Vsevolod D. Starosselski, to help secure the accession to the throne of the penultimate shah, Reza Khan Pahlavi (1878–1944). When France officially recognized the new state of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the government in Paris offered to return the surviving ships of the Black Sea Fleet, but the Soviet government refused to take back those now-useless pieces of junk.
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