Commander of the southern front during the civil war. The offensive of the red army on the southern front

Top to bottom, left to right:

Armed Forces of the South of Russia in 1919,
the hanging of the workers of Yekaterinoslav by Austro-Hungarian troops during the Austro-German occupation in 1918,
red infantry on the march in 1920,
L. D. Trotsky in 1918,
tachanka of the 1st Cavalry Army.

Chronology

1918 I stage of the civil war - "democratic"
1918 June Nationalization Decree
1919, January Introduction of food appropriation
1919 Fight against A.V. Kolchak, A.I. Denikin, Yudenich
1920 Soviet-Polish war
1920 Fight against P.N. Wrangel
1920, November. End of the civil war in European territory
1922, October. The end of the civil war in the Far East

Civil War - organized armed struggle for power between classes, social groups, the most acute form of class struggle.

Civil War - “the armed struggle between various groups of the population, which was based on deep social, national and political contradictions, took place with the active intervention of foreign forces at various stages and stages ...” ( Academician Yu.A. Polyakov).

The seizure of state power in Russia by the Bolsheviks and the dispersal of the Constituent Assembly that followed soon can be considered the beginning of an armed confrontation in Russia. The first shots are heard in the South of Russia, in the Cossack regions, already in the fall of 1917.

General Alekseev, the last chief of staff of the tsarist army, began to form the Volunteer Army on the Don, but by the beginning of 1918 it was no more than 3,000 officers and cadets.

Creator and Supreme Leader of the Volunteer Army - General Staff Adjutant General Mikhail Alekseev

As he wrote A.I. Denikin in Sketches of Russian Troubles, "the white movement grew spontaneously and inevitably."

The first months of the victory of Soviet power, armed clashes were of a local nature, all opponents of the new government gradually determined their strategy and tactics.

This confrontation took on a truly front-line, large-scale character in the spring of 1918. three main stages development of armed confrontation in Russia, proceeding primarily from the account of the alignment of political forces and the peculiarities of the formation of fronts.

The first stage covers the time from spring to autumn 1918., when the military-political confrontation becomes global in nature, large-scale military operations begin. The defining feature of this stage is its so-called "Democratic" character , when representatives of the socialist parties acted as an independent anti-Bolshevik camp with l voices of the return of political power to the Constituent Assembly and the restoration of the gains of the February Revolution. It is this camp that is chronologically ahead of the White Guard camp in its organizational design.
The second stage was from the fall of 1918 to the end of 1919. - confrontation between white and red ... Up to the beginning of 1920, one of the main political opponents of the Bolsheviks was the white movement with the slogans of "non-determination of the state system" and liquidation of Soviet power ... This direction endangered not only the October, but also the February conquests. Them the main political force was the cadet party, and the base for the formation of the army was the generals and officers of the former tsarist army... The whites were united by hatred of the Soviet regime and the Bolsheviks, the desire to preserve united and indivisible Russia.
The third stage of the Civil War - from the spring of 1920 to the end of 1920. the events of the Soviet-Polish war and the fight against P.N. Wrangel ... Wrangel's defeat at the end of 1920 marked the end of the Civil War, but anti-Soviet armed uprisings continued in many regions of Soviet Russia during the years of the New Economic Policy.

A feature of the civil war in Russia was its close intertwining with anti-Soviet military intervention powers of the Entente. She acted as the main factor in delaying and exacerbating the bloody “Russian turmoil”. The intervention was attended by Germany, France, England, USA, Japan, Poland and others. They supplied the anti-Bolshevik forces with weapons, provided financial and military-political support. The policy of the interventionists was determined by:

the desire to end the Bolshevik regime and
prevent the "spreading" of the revolution,
return the lost property of foreign citizens and
get new territories and spheres of influence at the expense of Russia.

The first stage of the civil war (spring - autumn 1918)

Beginning of foreign military intervention and civil war (February 1918 - March 1919)

In the first months of the establishment of Soviet power in Russia, armed clashes were of a local nature, all opponents of the new government gradually determined their strategy and tactics. The armed struggle acquired a nationwide scale in the spring of 1918.

In 1918, formed the main centers of the anti-Bolshevik movement in Moscow and Petrograd, united the Cadets, Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries.

A strong anti-Bolshevik movement unfolded among cossacks.

On the Don and Kuban, they were headed by General P.N. Krasnov

Pyotr Nikolaevich Krasnov - General of the Russian Imperial Army, Ataman of the Great Don Army

in the South Urals - ataman P.I. Dutov.

Ataman of the Orenburg Cossacks A.I.Dutov

The basis of the white movement on the south of Russia and the North Caucasus became the General's Volunteer Army L.G. Kornilov.

Leader of the White Movement in the South of Russia of the General Staff General of Infantry Lavr Kornilov

German troops occupied the Baltic States, part of Belarus, Transcaucasia and the North Caucasus. The Germans actually ruled in Ukraine: they overthrew the bourgeois-democratic Verkhovna Rada, which they used during the occupation of the Ukrainian lands, and in April 1918 put Hetman P.P. Skoropadsky.

Territory occupied by German troops after imprisonmentBrest Peace

Romania captured Bessarabia.
In March - April 1918, the first contingents of the troops of England, France, the United States and Japan appeared in Russia (in Murmansk and Arkhangelsk, in Vladivostok, in Central Asia).

In these conditions, the Supreme Council of the Entente decided to use the 45-thousandth Czechoslovak Corps, who was (in agreement with Moscow) in his subordination. It consisted of captured Slavic soldiers of the Austro-Hungarian army and followed by rail to Vladivostok for subsequent transfer to France. According to the agreement concluded March 26, 1918 with the Soviet government, the Czechoslovak legionaries were to advance "not as a combat unit, but as a group of citizens with weapons at their disposal to repel armed attacks by counter-revolutionaries." However, during the movement, their conflicts with the local authorities became more frequent. On May 26, in Chelyabinsk, conflicts escalated into real battles, and the legionnaires occupied the city ... Their armed action was immediately supported by the military missions of the Entente in Russia and anti-Bolshevik forces. As a result, in the Volga region, in the Urals, in Siberia and in the Far East - wherever there were echelons with Czechoslovak legionnaires - Soviet power was overthrown.

General of the Czechoslovak Corps R. Gaida

At the same time, in many provinces of Russia, peasants, dissatisfied with the food policy of the Bolsheviks, revolted (according to official data, only major anti-Soviet peasant uprisings were at least 130).

The performance of the Czechoslovak Corps gave impetus the formation of the front, which bore the so-called "democratic coloration" and was mainly Socialist-Revolutionary. It was this front, and not the white movement, that was decisive at the initial stage of the Civil War.

Socialist parties (mainly right SR), relying on the invaders' landing forces, the Czechoslovak corps and peasant rebel detachments, formed a number of Komuch governments (Committee of Constituent Assembly members) in Samara, the Supreme Administration of the Northern Region in Arkhangelsk, the West Siberian Commissariat in Novonikolaevsk (now Novosibirsk), The Provisional Siberian Government in Tomsk, the Trans-Caspian Provisional Government in Ashgabat, etc. In their activities, they tried to draw up “ democratic alternative”Both the Bolshevik dictatorship and the bourgeois-monarchist counter-revolution.

Komuch of the first composition - I. M. Brushvit, P. D. Klimushkin, B. K. Fortunatov, V. K. Volsky (chairman) and I. P. Nesterov

Their programs included requirements

convocation of the Constituent Assembly,
restoration of the political rights of all citizens without exception,
freedom of trade and refusal from strict state regulation of the economic activities of peasants while maintaining a number of important provisions of the Soviet Decree on Land,
establishing "social partnership" between workers and capitalists in the denationalization of industrial enterprises, etc.

In the summer of 1918, all opposition forces became a real threat to the Bolshevik regime. , which controlled only the territory of the center of Russia. The territory controlled by Komuch included the Volga region and part of the Urals. The Bolshevik government was also overthrown in Siberia, where the regional government of the Siberian Duma was formed. The breakaway parts of the empire - Transcaucasia, Central Asia, the Baltic states - had their own national governments. The Germans captured Ukraine, the Don and Kuban - Krasnov and Denikin.

August 30, 1918 ... terrorist group killed the chairman of the Petrograd Cheka Uritsky, and the right Socialist Revolutionary Kaplan seriously wounded Lenin .

On August 30, 1918, at the Michelson plant on Lenin, an attempt was made on the life of the Socialist Revolutionary Fanny Kaplan

By the end of the summer of 1918, the position of the Soviet government had become critical. Almost three quarters of the territory of the former Russian Empire was under the control of various anti-Bolshevik forces, as well as the occupying Austro-German troops.

Soon, however, on the main front (Eastern) is turning. Soviet troops under the command of I.I. Vatsetis and S.S. Kamenev in September 1918 went on the offensive there. Kazan fell first, then Simbirsk, in October - Samara. By winter, the Reds approached the Urals.

Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Republic (09/01/1918 - 07/09/1919)
I. I. Vatsetis

Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Republic (1919-1924)
S. S. Kamenev

The restoration of Soviet power in the Urals and the Volga region ended the first stage of the civil war.

Second stage of the civil war (autumn 1918 - late 1919)

The year 1919 was decisive for the Bolsheviks, a reliable and constantly growing Red Army.

As part of the Central Committee, Politburo of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) for the prompt solution of military and political problems. It included:

IN AND. Lenin - Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars;

L. B. Krestinsky - Secretary of the Party Central Committee;

I.V. Stalin - People's Commissar for Nationalities;

L. D. Trotsky - Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic, People's Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs.

Membership candidates were

N.I. Bukharin - editor of the newspaper "Pravda"

G.E. Zinoviev - Chairman of the Petrograd Soviet,

M.I. Kalinin - Chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee.

Worked under the direct control of the Central Committee The Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic, headed by L.D. Trotsky ... The institute of military commissars was introduced in the spring of 1918, one of its important tasks was to control the activities of military specialists - former officers. Already at the end of 1918 in the Soviet armed forces there were about 7 thousand commissars. Near During the civil war, 30% of the former generals and officers of the old army sided with the Red Army.

This was determined by two main factors:

acting on the side of the Bolshevik government for ideological reasons;
the policy of attracting "military specialists" - former tsarist officers - to the Red Army was pursued by L.D. Trotsky using repressive methods.

“It is possible that one of the most decisive moments that led to the victory of the Bolsheviks in the Civil War was precisely the wide participation in the Civil War on the side of the Bolsheviks, and not just“ use in the most responsible positions ”, and quite conscious participation, and not under duress. well-educated and gifted former officers of the tsarist army, which was caused by their patriotic sentiments in the conditions when representatives of many foreign states acted on the side of anti-Bolshevik forces on a wide front ”

Has seriously changed and international situation. Germany and her allies in the world war in November laid down their arms before the Entente. Revolutions took place in Germany and Austria-Hungary. The leadership of the RSFSR on November 13, 1918 annulled the Brest Peace Treaty, and the new governments of these countries were forced to evacuate their troops from Russia. Bourgeois-national governments arose in Poland, the Baltic States, Belarus, and the Ukraine, which immediately sided with the Entente.

The defeat of Germany freed up significant military contingents of the Entente and at the same time opened for her a convenient and short road to Moscow from the southern regions. Under these conditions, the Entente leadership prevailed with the intention to defeat Soviet Russia with the forces of its own armies.

In the spring of 1919, the Supreme council of the Entente developed a plan for the next military campaign. As noted in one of his secret documents, the intervention was to "be expressed in the combined military actions of the Russian anti-Bolshevik forces and the armies of neighboring allied states." At the end of November 1918, a joint Anglo-French squadron of 32 pennants (12 battleships, 10 cruisers and 10 destroyers) appeared off the Black Sea coast of Russia. British troops landed in Batum and Novorossiysk, and French troops in Odessa and Sevastopol. The total number of the combat forces of the interventionists concentrated in the south of Russia was increased by February 1919 to 130 thousand people. The Entente contingents increased significantly in the Far East and Siberia (up to 150,000 people), as well as in the North (up to 20,000 people).

In Siberia, November 18, 1918 came to power admiral A.V. Kolchak. ... He put an end to the disorderly actions of the anti-Bolshevik coalition.

Having dispersed the Directory, he proclaimed himself the Supreme Ruler of Russia (the rest of the leaders of the white movement soon announced his submission to him)

In March 1919, the well-armed 300,000-strong army of A.V. Kolchak launched an offensive from the east, intending to unite with Denikin's forces for a joint attack on Moscow. Having captured Ufa, the Kolchakites fought their way to Simbirsk, Samara, Votkinsk, but were soon stopped by the Red Army. At the end of April, Soviet troops under the command of S.S. Kamenev and M.V. Frunze went on the offensive and in the summer advanced deep into Siberia. By the beginning of 1920, the Kolchakites were finally defeated, and the admiral himself was arrested and shot by the verdict of the Irkutsk Revolutionary Committee.

In the summer of 1919, the center of the armed struggle moved to the Southern Front. July 3 General A.I. Denikin issued his famous "Moscow directive", and his army

in 150 thousand people began an offensive along the entire 700-km front from Kiev to Tsaritsin. The White Front included such important centers as Voronezh, Oryol, Kiev. In this area of \u200b\u200b1 million sq. km with a population of up to 50 million people were located in 18 provinces and regions. By mid-autumn, Denikin's army captured Kursk and Orel. But by the end of October, the troops of the Southern Front (commander A.I. Yegorov) defeated the White regiments, and then began to crowd them along the entire front line. The remnants of Denikin's army, headed in April 1920 by General P.N. Wrangel, fortified in the Crimea.

Simultaneously with Denikin, the Entente moved an army to Petrograd to help him general Yudenich. On June 5, 1919, Yudenich was appointed by A. V. Kolchak as commander-in-chief of all Russian land and naval armed forces operating against the Bolsheviks on the North-Western Front.

White took two offensives on Petrograd - in the spring and autumn of 1919. As a result may offensive Gdov, Yamburg and Pskov were occupied by the Northern Corps, but by August 26, as a result of the counteroffensive of the Reds of the 7th and 15th armies of the Western Front, the Whites were driven out of these cities. Then on August 26, in Riga, representatives of the White movement, the Baltic countries and Poland made a decision on joint actions against the Bolsheviks and an offensive against Petrograd on September 15. However, after the proposal by the Soviet government (August 31 and September 11) to begin peace negotiations with the Baltic republics on the basis of the recognition of their independence, Yudenich lost the help of these allies.

Autumn offensive Yudenich against Petrograd was unsuccessful, the Northwestern Army was pushed out to Estonia, where, after the signing of the Tartu Peace Treaty between the RSFSR and Estonia, 15,000 soldiers and officers of Yudenich's Northwestern Army were first disarmed, and then 5,000 of them were captured and sent to concentration camps ... The slogan of the White movement about "United and indivisible Russia", that is, non-recognition of separatist regimes, deprived Yudenich of support not only for Estonia, but also for Finland, which never provided any assistance to the North-Western Army in its battles near Petrograd

War with bourgeois landlord Poland and the defeat of Wrangel's troops (IV-XI 1920)

At the beginning of 1920, as a result of hostilities, the outcome of the front-line Civil War was actually decided in favor of the Bolshevik government. At the final stage, the main hostilities were associated with the Soviet-Polish war and the fight against Wrangel's army.

Significantly aggravated the nature of the civil war soviet-Polish war ... Polish Head of State Marshal Jozef Pilsudski

(polish military, statesman and politician, the first head of the revived Polish state, the founder of the Polish army; Marshal of Poland.)

hatched a plan to create “ Greater Poland within the borders of 1772”From the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea, which includes a large part of the Lithuanian, Belarusian and Ukrainian lands, including those that have never been ruled by Warsaw. The Polish national government was supported by the Entente countries, which sought to create a "sanitary block" of Eastern European countries between Bolshevik Russia and the Western countries. On April 17, Pilsudski ordered an offensive on Kiev and signed an agreement with Ataman Petliura.

Poland recognized the Directory headed by Petliura as the supreme power of Ukraine. For this S. Petliura transferred the territory of Western Ukraine to Poland.

On May 7 Kiev was taken. The victory was gained with extraordinary ease, for the Soviet troops withdrew without serious resistance.

But already on May 14, a successful counteroffensive by the troops of the Western Front (commanded by M.N. Tukhachevsky) began, on May 26 - by the Southwestern Front (commanded by A.I.Egorov). In mid-July, they reached the borders of Poland. On June 12, Soviet troops occupied Kiev. The speed of a victory won can only be compared with the speed of a previous defeat.

With the help of harsh measures, up to the public execution of demoralized officers, and with the support of France, the general turned the scattered Denikin divisions into a disciplined and combat-ready Russian army. In June 1920, a landing was made from the Crimea to the Don and Kuban, and the main forces of the Wrangels were thrown into the Donbass. On October 3, the Russian army began an offensive in the northwestern direction to Kakhovka.

The offensive of the Wrangel troops was repulsed, and during the operation of the Southern Front army under the command of M. V. Frunze

completely captured the Crimea. On November 14-16, 1920, an armada of ships flying the St.Andrew's flag left the coast of the peninsula, taking the defeated white regiments and tens of thousands of civilian refugees to a foreign land. Thus, P.N. Wrangel saved them from the merciless Red Terror, which fell on the Crimea immediately after the evacuation of the Whites.

In the European part of Russia, after the capture of Crimea, it was eliminated last white front... The military issue ceased to be the main one for Moscow, but hostilities on the outskirts of the country continued for many months.

Defeat of interventionists and White Guards in Eastern Siberia and the Far East (1918-1922)

The Red Army, having defeated Kolchak, went to the Transbaikalia in the spring of 1920. The Far East was at that time in the hands of Japan. To avoid a collision with it, the government of Soviet Russia promoted the formation in April 1920 of a formally independent "buffer" state - the Far Eastern Republic (RER) with its capital in Chita. Soon the army of the Far East Republic began military operations against the White Guards supported by the Japanese, and in October 1922 occupied Vladivostok, completely clearing the Far East of whites and interventionists. After that, it was decided to liquidate the FER and include it in the RSFSR.

The Civil War became the biggest drama of the 20th century and the greatest tragedy in Russia. The armed struggle unfolding in the vastness of the country was waged with extreme tension of the forces of the opponents, was accompanied by mass terror (both white and red), and was distinguished by exceptional mutual bitterness. The fighting sides clearly understood that the fight can only have a fatal outcome for one side. That is why the civil war in Russia has become a great tragedy for all its political camps, movements and parties.

“Red”(The Bolsheviks and their supporters) believed that they were defending not only Soviet power in Russia, but also“ the world revolution and the ideas of socialism ”. Bolsheviks had more solid social support than their opponents. They received the strong support of the urban workers and the rural poor. The position of the main peasant masses was not stable and unequivocal, only the poorest part of the peasants consistently followed the Bolsheviks. The peasants' hesitation had their reasons: the “Reds” gave land, but then introduced the surplus appropriation system, which caused strong discontent in the countryside. However, the return of the previous order was also unacceptable for the peasantry: the victory of the "whites" threatened the return of land to the landowners and severe punishments for the destruction of the landowners' estates. The Social Revolutionaries and anarchists were in a hurry to take advantage of the peasants' hesitation. They managed to involve a significant part of the peasantry in an armed struggle, both against the whites and against the red.

In the political struggle against Soviet power, two political movements were consolidated:

democratic counterrevolution with the slogans of returning political power to the Constituent Assembly and restoring the gains of the February (1917) revolution (many Social Revolutionaries and Mensheviks advocated the establishment of Soviet power in Russia, but without the Bolsheviks (“For Soviets without Bolsheviks”));
white movement with the slogans "non-prediction of the state system" and the elimination of Soviet power. This direction endangered not only the October, but also the February conquests. The counter-revolutionary white movement was not homogeneous. It included monarchists and liberal republicans, supporters of the Constituent Assembly and adherents of a military dictatorship. Among the "whites" there were differences in foreign policy guidelines: some hoped for the support of Germany (Ataman Krasnov), others - for the help of the Entente powers (Denikin, Kolchak, Yudenich). The “whites” were united by their hatred of the Soviet regime and the Bolsheviks, and their desire to preserve a united and indivisible Russia. They did not have a single political program, the military in the leadership of the “white movement” pushed politicians into the background. There was also no clear coordination of actions between the main groups of "whites". The leaders of the Russian counter-revolution were in competition and at enmity among themselves.

For both warring parties, it was also important what position in the conditions of civil war it would take russian officers. Approximately 40% of the tsarist army of officers joined the “white movement”, 30% - sided with the Soviet regime, 30% - avoided participating in the civil war.

The Russian Civil War was getting worse armed intervention foreign powers. The invaders waged active hostilities on the territory of the former Russian Empire, occupied some of its regions, helped fuel a civil war in the country and contributed to its protraction. The intervention turned out to be an important factor in the “revolutionary all-Russian turmoil” and multiplied the number of victims.

The Bolsheviks won the civil war and repelled foreign intervention. This victory was due to a number of reasons.

The Bolsheviks managed to mobilize all the country's resources, turn it into a single military camp,
international solidarity and assistance from the proletariat of Europe and the United States were of great importance.
The policy of the White Guards - the abolition of the Decree on Land, the return of the land to its former owners, the unwillingness to cooperate with the liberal and socialist parties, punitive expeditions, pogroms, mass executions of prisoners - all this caused discontent among the population, up to armed resistance.
During the civil war, the opponents of the Bolsheviks failed to agree on a single program and a single leader of the movement.

The civil war was a terrible tragedy for Russia. By 1921, Russia was literally in ruins. Material damage amounted to more than 50 billion rubles gold ... industrial production fell to 4-20 % from the 1913 level.

During the hostilities, the mining enterprises of the Donetsk coal basin, the Baku oil region, the Urals and Siberia were particularly affected, many mines and mines were destroyed. Due to lack of fuel and raw materials, factories were stopped. The workers were forced to leave the cities and go to the countryside. The overall level of industrial production fell by 7 times ... The equipment has not been updated for a long time. Metallurgy produced as much metal as it was smelted under Peter I.

Withdrawn from the former Russian Empire the territories of Poland, Finland, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Western Ukraine, Belarus, Kara region (in Armenia) and Bessarabia. According to experts, the population in the remaining territories barely reached 135 million people. Losses in these territories as a result of wars, epidemics, emigration, and a reduction in the birth rate were:

Losses during the war (table)

The number of street children after the First World War and the Civil War. According to some data in 1921, there were 4.5 million homeless children, according to others - in 1922 there were 7 million street kids

Russian Civil War 1918-1922

Causes and main stages of the Civil War

Formation of red and white movements

Eastern front

Southern front. Hiking to Petrograd

Intervention.

War with Poland. End of the Civil War.

Domestic policy of the Bolsheviks in the Civil War. "War Communism".

Causes and stages of the Civil War

Causes of the Civil War

1. Resistance of political groups that have lost power, non-recognition of the Bolsheviks as part of Russian society, above all the officers and the intelligentsia.

2. The Bolsheviks' ignoring the norms of democracy and patriotism, the dispersal of the Constituent Assembly and the signing of the Brest Peace Treaty united the opponents of the Bolsheviks into a single organized force

Russian Civil War 1918-1922

Periodization of the Civil War

stage	characteristic
October 1917-spring 1918	"Soft Civil War". Military operations are mostly local in nature. The opponents of the Bolsheviks are either waging a political struggle, or are just forming their own movement. Most of the people support the Bolsheviks
Spring-summer 1918 - autumn 1920	The beginning of an open military confrontation, which is divided into a number of sub-periods: 1. summer-autumn 1918 - a period of escalation of the war caused by the introduction of a food dictatorship, which creates a massive base for the anti-Bolshevik movement 2. December 1918 - June 1919 - a period of confrontation between regular Reds and white armies, the white movement achieves the greatest successes, the period of a fierce front-line war, the strengthening of the red and white terror 3. the second half of 1919-autumn 1920 - the period of military defeats of the White Army. The peasantry leaned to the side of Soviet power
End of 1920-1922	The period of the "Little Civil War": mass peasant uprisings against the economic policy of the Bolsheviks, the growth of workers' discontent The Bolsheviks introduce a new economic policy, which contributes to the gradual fading of the Civil War

Formation of the White and Red movements. The beginning of the Civil War

date	event
Autumn 1917 - winter 1918	General P. N. Krasnov's cavalry corps campaign against Petrograd (unsuccessful); On the Don, General MV Alekseev and Ataman AM Kaledin began to form the Volunteer Army, LG Kornilov was appointed commander of the Volunteer Army (after him - General AI Denikin). The army retreated from the Don Ideology: 1. not to prejudge the future form of government 2. to restore a united and indivisible Russia 3. to fight the Bolsheviks until complete destruction
January 15, 1918	The Workers 'and Peasants' Red Army (RKKA) was created by decree of the Council of People's Commissars.
May 25, 1918	Speech by the Czechoslovak Corps: Czechs and Slovaks, in response to an attempt to disarm them, began military actions against the Soviet government, which supported the anti-Bolshevik forces. The civil war began.

Eastern front

Southern front. Hiking to Petrograd.

Spring 1918	Ataman P.N.Krasnov led the Don Army
December 1918	The Red Army managed to stop the advance of the Cossack troops
End of 1918	All the anti-Bolshevik armed forces of the South of Russia were united under the command of A.I. Denikin.
May - June 1919	Denikin's army went on the offensive, capturing Donbass, part of Ukraine, Belgorod, Tsaritsyn.
July 1919	The beginning of the Denikin offensive on Moscow, captured Kursk, Oryol, Voronezh
October 1919	The Red Army launched a counteroffensive
February-March 1920	The main forces of the Volunteer Army were defeated
April 1920	P.N. Wrangel became the Commander-in-Chief of the Volunteer Army, who evacuated troops to the Crimea

Hiking to Petrograd

Intervention

Intervention is a violent intervention in the internal affairs of a sovereign state of other powers.

This article is an excerpt from N.E. Kakurin and I.I. Vatsetis “Civil War. 1918-1921 "and describes the situation and hostilities on the Southern Front in the period October 1917 - May 1919.

The full text of the book is located.

From chapter 2.
October period of the Civil War

[…] Of the White Guard governments that originally appeared […] on the territory of Soviet Russia, the Don and Ukrainian governments were the most dangerous for the revolution.

The central Soviet government has designated the Don as the main and closest target of action. A concentration of Soviet troops began against him under the leadership of Comrade Antonov-Ovseenko, who was appointed commander-in-chief of the forces operating against the southern counter-revolution [...].

The main forces of Kaledin were concentrated in the Kamenskaya - Glubokoe - Millerovo - Likhaya area; in Rostov-on-Don and in Novocherkassk, the Volunteer Army was formed [...].

The Soviet command decided to carry out the following action plan: 1) to interrupt all communication routes along the railways between Ukraine and the Don; 2) open communication with Donbass bypassing the North Donetsk railway [...] 3) establish communication between Kharkov and Voronezh [...] and 4) establish communication with the North Caucasus, where the Bolshevik-minded 39th Infantry Division was drawn from the Caucasian front. In general, the plan provided for the formation of a barrier in the direction of Ukraine and the concentration of all efforts against the Don [...].

By January 7, 1918, Soviet troops [...] occupied the Donetsk Basin with the main forces [...]. On January 8, Antonov-Ovseenko decides to eliminate Kaledin's forces with a blow from his main forces from the Donbass, for which Sablin's column must develop an offensive from Luhansk to station. I'm dashing […].

On the Voronezh and Kharkov directions, the Don Cossacks, due to decomposition, were replaced by units of the Volunteer Army, which for some time delayed the advance of the Soviet troops. The Sievers detachment resumed its offensive on February 3, being reinforced by newly arrived revolutionary detachments from the center [...], Sievers on February 8 established contact with revolutionary Taganrog, where the workers of the Baltic plant revolted, captured the city and forced the White Guard garrison to retreat to Rostov with heavy losses [... ].

From the east, the white Don was threatened by the detachments of the revolutionary Tsaritsyn, who occupied st. Cheer. In the south, in the area of \u200b\u200bst. Tikhoretskaya in the rear of Kaledin concentrated units of the 39th Infantry Division of the old army, returning from the Caucasian front of the world war.

By February 10, the resistance of volunteer units and small Kaledin detachments was finally broken, but the advance of Soviet troops proceeded slowly due to damage to the railway tracks and fears for their rear [...]. On the Taganrog direction, the volunteers delayed the advance of the Sievers detachment, but the last one, on February 13, approached Rostov; at the same time, units of the 39th Infantry Division occupied Bataisk [...]. Parts of the Volunteer Army [...] withdrew across the Aksai border to the Salsk steppes and to the Kuban [...].

At the same time, Kiev, where the central government of the Rada was located, was threatened by the Bolshevik-minded remnants of the old army of the Southwestern Front [...]. The Rada, however, successfully fought with these troops, as a result of which the Headquarters of the Commander-in-Chief, already captured by the Bolsheviks, was forced to send its troops against the Rada [...]. The current situation forced comrade Antonov-Ovseenko to speed up the beginning of decisive actions against the Rada. These actions were caused by considerations of foreign policy, since at that time there were negotiations with the Germans about the conclusion of the Brest-Litovsk Peace and it was important to prevent the Rada from disrupting these negotiations, thereby strengthening the Soviet government in Ukraine.

The beginning of a decisive offensive in Ukraine was scheduled for January 18, 1918. It was decided to deliver the main blow from Kharkov to Poltava, together with those troops that threatened Kiev from different directions. The management of all operations in the main direction was entrusted to Muravyov [...]. The approach of the revolutionary forces to Kiev caused an uprising of the workers of the Kiev Arsenal and some military units on January 28, but it was suppressed by the troops of the Rada even before the approach of Muravyov's troops [...].

After a fierce bombing on February 9, Kiev was taken, and on the eve of the government and the Rada left the city and evacuated to Zhitomir.

Having occupied Kiev, Muravyov began pursuing the remnants of the Rada's troops in the direction of Zhitomir, and only on February 12 did he manage to establish contact with the II Guards Corps. […].

This entire period is characterized by the absence of continuous fronts. The territorial demarcation of the armed forces of the revolution and counter-revolution occurred later; external intervention, as we shall see later, hastened the progress of this process and shaped it.

The actions of both sides during that period are of significant military interest as they relate to the period of the Civil War unfolding, somewhat reminiscent of what is customarily characterized in military literature as the period of border clashes. The forces of the revolution and counter-revolution were at the stage of organization and were not yet mobilized for the great Civil War. The armed forces of the revolution during this period consisted of Red Guard detachments, made up of workers and volunteers - soldiers of the old army and individual Bolshevik-minded units of the old army that retained their fighting efficiency in the general collapse of the world war front. In terms of their military training, the Red Guard units are significantly inferior to the detachments that emerged from the bowels of the old army, but the inadequacy of their training is, as it were, compensated for by the high political consciousness of the Red Guard proletarian.

The actions of both sides during this period were limited to the release of separate independently acting detachments and were distinguished by great maneuverability and activity, recalling the actions of the vanguard detachments in the border war. The detachments operated mainly along the railways; horse transport and the wagon train of parts were replaced by a railway carriage. The entire period of "border clashes" between the revolution and the counter-revolution went down in the history of the Civil War under the name of the echelon war [...].

From chapter 3.
German occupation and the beginning of the intervention

The Austro-German command for the occupation of Ukraine appointed 29 infantry and 3 cavalry divisions, which amounted to at least 200,000-220,000 fighters [...]. All this mass of troops Antonov-Ovseenko could oppose only 3,000 fighters in the Kiev region, about 3,000 fighters scattered in various cities of Ukraine, and, finally, Muravyov's "army" with a total number of not more than 5,000 people. The formation of local Ukrainian units was only at the beginning and so far moved slowly.

The successful and systematic course of the formations was negatively influenced by the work of the Left Social Revolutionaries and anarchists, which was not coordinated with the Soviet command, who produced their own formations and pursued their own plans and goals, regardless of the interests of the main Soviet command. The situation of the latter was further complicated by the fact that the Soviet power in Ukraine had not yet taken the form of such stable forms as was the case within Great Russia.

Thus, the position of the Soviet command in Ukraine was very difficult. In the presence of an unorganized rear, he had to withstand a struggle with a first-class enemy in conditions of extreme numerical and qualitative inequality. However, for its part, it took all measures to detain him [...]. On March 2, German troops entered Kiev, and on March 3 they were in Zhmerinka.

On this day, the Soviet government signed a peace treaty with the powers of the central bloc. According to the terms of this peace, it recognized the independence of Ukraine and Finland, renounced Batum, Kars and Ardagan, transferred to Turkey, and agreed to determine the further fate of Poland, Lithuania, Courland by the central powers alone. It pledged to demobilize all its land and sea forces, agreed to the occupation of Latvia and Estonia by German troops [...].

At the same time, Antonov-Ovseenko thought to organize a peasant war against the Austro-Germans. He took measures for the militant organization of the peasantry in the Poltava and Kharkiv regions in order to raise the people's war in the rear of the enemy. But the organization of the partisan war required time, money and personnel, and Antonov-Ovsenko had neither one nor the other, nor the third. However, the first partisan-volunteer brigades to some extent successfully coped with their tasks and managed to deliver sometimes sensitive strikes to the advanced or presumptuous enemy units […].

The approach of the Germans to such a vital area for feeding the revolution as the Donbass immediately affected the character and stubbornness of the battles. Detachments that were retreating in front of the Germans flocked to the Donbass from all sides. In the Donbass itself, vols. Voroshilov and Baranov carried out energetic work to raise the local revolutionary forces and to prepare Donbass for defense [...].

The first offensive attempt of the Donetsk army was made in the Izyum direction; although it ended in failure, since the numerical ratio was far from in favor of the Reds, but it gave them a gain of time and forced the Germans to pull up significant forces to the Donbass. Thanks to this, the Germans captured Bakhmut on April 24. At the same time they occupied Kupyansk, and the advance towards Starobelsk began. The red command here again tried to inflict a flank attack on them, this time from Luhansk, which led to stubborn battles halfway between Luhansk and Starobelsk in the area of \u200b\u200bst. Svatovo and s. Evsug. An attempt by Antonov-Ovseenko to move, in turn, the Sievers column to Kupyansk, now called the 5th Army, did not yield results. Having delayed the pressure of the Reds here, the Germans soon occupied the Chertkovo station on the Voronezh-Rostov highway and thus completed the separation of the Red forces [...] from the RSFSR. For these forces to get out of the encirclement, there was only one main railway: Likhaya - Tsaritsyn, which they used [...].

While the armed forces of the revolution under the leadership of Comrades. Voroshilova and Baranova defended the Donetsk Basin, Soviet units in the Yekaterinoslav-Taganrog direction were quickly rolling back under the pressure of the Germans [...].

Following the German units advancing in the Ukraine, a White Guard detachment made its way from Romania to the Don along the southern operational directions, formed there mainly from officers under the care of the general. Shcherbachev. This detachment was called the Drozdovsky brigade. Its number reached 1000 people. Having crossed the Dnieper [...], this brigade, continuing its movement among the Austro-German columns, went to Melitopol, occupied it and, together with the German units, approached Rostov, participating together with the Germans in the capture of the city. Red troops operating south of the Donetsk Basin retreated through Rostov-on-Don to the North Caucasus. From here, part of the forces went to Tsaritsyn, where they became part of those Red forces that had retreated under the command of Comrade Voroshilov.

The invasion of the German army into the Ukraine and the RSFSR could not but divert the attention and forces of the Soviet government from the hotbeds of internal counter-revolution in the Don and Kuban [...]. The political struggle between the local Cossacks and the nonresident population in the Kuban led to the organization of the armed forces of both sides. The Kuban government, which had emerged under Kerensky, began to form a local Volunteer Army [...]. At the same time, cells of the armed forces of the revolution began to be organized in the Kuban, partly from the "nonresident" population, from parts of the old Caucasian army that was withdrawing from the Caucasian front and from the sailors of the Black Sea Fleet. These detachments disarmed in their districts the Cossacks hostile to the Soviet regime [...]. Part of the Cossacks went to the mountains, forming White Guard partisan detachments.

In such a situation, the organization of the Soviet troops of the North Caucasus and, in particular, the Kuban took place, which gradually from revolutionary detachments that did not have any organization began to take the form of military units controlled by command personnel, mostly from the poorest population of the region.

Finally, the third force in the Kuban was the Kornilov Volunteer Army. The latter, after the occupation of the Don region by Soviet troops, decided to move to the Kuban in order to unite there with the Kuban White Guard units and arrange for itself a base in the Kuban for further struggle against Soviet power. As a result of the decision of the command of the Volunteer Army, its campaign followed, which its participants called ice. However, the beginning of this campaign on March 12, 1918 almost coincided with the overthrow of the Kuban Cossack government (Rada). On March 13, 1918, it with a small detachment of troops loyal to it was expelled from Yekaterinodar [...]. This circumstance was still unknown to Kornilov.

The forces of the Volunteer Army when it left Rostov did not exceed 4000 people [...]. During his movement, Kornilov had to reckon with the danger of meeting with Soviet troops in the area of \u200b\u200bthe Rostov-Tikhoretskaya-Torgovaya railway or to fear their possible pursuit [...]. Kornilov entered the Kuban region, where he first learned about the fate of the Kuban Cossack government.

The hope for the support of the local Kuban Cossacks did not come true; the volunteers were greeted not only with indifference, but even with hostility [...]. However, Kornilov managed, after several maneuvering movements, to join forces with the Kuban White Guards on March 30 [...], which increased the composition of the Volunteer Army by 3000 soldiers [...].

The union of volunteers with the Kuban people coincided with a turning point in the mood of the Cossacks (the wealthy and kulak population). It [...] became more and more hostile to the Soviet regime. On March 30, 1918, Kornilov assumed command of all the combined White Guard forces in the Kuban and, counting on the weakness of the Soviet garrison in Yekaterinodar, decided to take it by a detour from the south [...].

On April 9, 1918, Kornilov launched a series of [...] attacks on Yekaterinodar. During one of them (April 13), he was killed. The command of the remnants of his army was taken over by the general. Denikin, who hastened to start the retreat to the Don [...]. Upon arrival on the Don, the brigade of General Drozdovsky joined her [...]. Later it became the nucleus for the formation of the counter-revolutionary troops of the North Caucasus and in the summer of 1918 it turned into a real army.

From chapter 4.
Summer and autumn campaigns of 1918 on the Southern Front and the North Caucasus

The impending wave of the German occupation fanned the sparks of the White Cossack rebellion smoldering on the Don into a great conflagration [...]; On May 6, 1918, the insurgent Cossacks occupied Novocherkassk, on May 8 they, together with the Germans, entered Rostov [...].

The Don army began to rapidly increase in numbers [...]. Donets managed to use all the advantages of the situation. Their left flank and rear relied on friendly Germans. The volunteer army provided the right flank. All this created an advantageous strategic position. Numerical superiority and great mobility (the predominance of cavalry in the army) made it possible to widely develop offensive operations.

As a result, during the summer of 1918, the power [...] of gene. Krasnova spread to the entire territory of the Don region. The further goals of the Don command, which declared that it did not intend to organize a campaign against Moscow, and at the same time directed all efforts to form the largest possible army, were, first of all, to achieve strategic support of its borders. The administrative borders of the region did not represent profitable frontiers for this, why on September 1, 1918 the "Don Circle" issued a "decree" on the occupation of the strategic road junctions closest to the border of the Don army by the Don Army: Tsaritsyn, Kamyshin, Balashov, Povorin, Novokhopersk, Kalach and Boguchar […].

The desire of the Don Army to fulfill these tasks in connection with the activity shown by the 10th Red Army, which occupied the Tsaritsyn area, gave great revival to the autumn campaign of 1918 on the Southern Front. The 10th Red Army was formed from the detachments that retreated to the Tsaritsyn region from the Ukraine and from the Donbass in the spring of 1918 [...]. This powerful group, located on the outskirts of Tsaritsyn, occupied a flank position in relation to the entire Don Front [...].

Tsaritsyn itself with its district was, thanks to the abundance of the working population in it, one of the vital revolutionary centers of the southeast of Russia. This, however, did not exhaust its significance; economically and militarily, it was important for both sides as an industrial center, and strategically - as a junction of railways, ground and waterways. In addition, due to the flank position, all the successes of the Cossacks in the northern directions without first taking possession of Tsaritsyn [...] were fragile, and, possessing it, the Soviet troops ensured their dominance over the Lower Volga and communication with Astrakhan and the North Caucasian theater [...].

The Don command, instead of advancing to the north, had to think about restoring its position on the Tsaritsyno direction. He succeeded by bringing in his reserve formations in the form of the so-called "standing" army [...], which consisted of young Cossacks. Under the influence of the offensive of this army, the 10th Red Army by the middle of September 1918 was forced to a partial withdrawal in the Tsaritsyn area, after which the Don forces gained operational freedom in the northern areas [...].

While all these events were taking place on the Southern Front, hostilities in the North Caucasus grew to the size of significant operations. A significant concentration of Soviet forces formed in the North Caucasus. This happened both due to the extremely acute nature that the class struggle took there, and due to the fact that numerous Bolshevik-minded remnants of the collapsed Caucasian front of the old army, unable to freely get through the White German Don to Russia, settled in the North Caucasus. However, they were not united by a single military administration due to the lack of the same in the administrative and political respect, since there were three republics in the North Caucasus at that time: Kuban, Black Sea and Stavropol [...]. Some of the Soviet commanders, such as Sorokin, were at enmity not only with each other, but also with their ciccs. And yet the situation was already difficult, since the question of land revealed the departure of the Cossack masses from the revolution. The first sign of this was the invitation by the Cossacks of the Taman Peninsula to their aid from the Germans who occupied the Crimea. The Germans sent one infantry regiment to help them, and from that time on, the struggle on the Taman Peninsula absorbed significant Soviet forces [...].

Such was the situation in the North Caucasus, when the command of the Volunteer Army, represented by the general. Denikin, rejecting the offer of the Don command about joint actions on Tsaritsyn and taking into account the internal state of the North Caucasus, set [...] the task of liberating the Don and Kuban from the Soviet troops. The fulfillment of this task provided the Volunteer Army with a secured and rich base, free from German influence, for further movement to the north [...].

From chapter 5.
German occupation and revolution. The internal state of the parties and the development of their armed forces

The occupation of Ukraine by Austro-German troops, which ended in early May 1918, further exacerbated the revolutionary class struggle. At the beginning of April in Kiev, on the initiative and with the permission of the German command and, despite the protests of the Central Rada government, a congress of "grain growers" (large land owners and kulaks) was convened. From the very first day, this congress took a hostile position towards the petty-bourgeois government of the Central Rada, and then [...] declared Ukraine a monarchy with a hetman at the head and under the protectorate of Germany. The hetman was elected general. Skoropadsky, who was immediately recognized by the German, and then the Austrian government; the ruling representatives of the Central Rada - Petliura, Vinichenko, Professor Grushetsky and others were arrested [...].

The policy of the landlord-officer government of Skoropadsky, as well as the German economic pressure [...] could not satisfy the demands of the Ukrainian industrial bourgeoisie and the chauvinist urban and rural intelligentsia. The conspiratorial congress of liberal-political and national-chauvinist bourgeois and compromise organizations, which took place in the second half of July in Bila Tserkva, marked the beginning of the so-called "Ukrainian National Union", whose task was to unite around it all elements dissatisfied with the German regime and the German occupation and use the growth class-revolutionary sentiments of the peasantry and the proletariat. Subsequently, this "union" separated from itself an administrative-executive body Directory, which included representatives of various political groups, including the previously mentioned Petlyura and Vinichenko.

July and August 1918 in Ukraine were marked by the massive growth of the peasant insurrection, the growth of the revolutionary struggle in the cities and the growth of underground organizations.

In November 1918, first Austria and then Germany embarked on the path of revolution. Germany, exhausted in the world war, is forced to accept [...] the conditions of the victorious Entente [...].

After the November revolution in Germany, the development of the revolutionary struggle in Ukraine proceeded at an especially fast pace [...]. The Directory seeks to use the revolutionary insurgency to consolidate its power. It proclaims an irreconcilable struggle against the hetmanate, declares Ukraine a “people's republic” and proclaims the immediate convocation of a labor congress [...]. At the beginning of December 1918 [...] the Directory captures Kiev and declares itself to be an all-Ukrainian government. In the first days of December, a coup takes place in the years. Kharkov, Yekaterinoslav and Poltava [...]. With the collapse of the hetmanate, the hetman officers, the kulaks and the city bourgeoisie rush into the revolutionary-minded peasant army.

The Government of the Directory, under the influence of the revolutionary mood of the peasantry and the proletariat, was forced before the start of the uprising to include in the program of struggle slogans that to a certain extent satisfied the needs of the revolutionary masses, immediately after the seizure of the administrative centers begins to sweep aside the "Bolshevik stratifications" of its program, defending the interests of the kulak, the middle urban bourgeoisie.

The rapid disintegration of the Directory's army, as well as the death of the Directory itself, was also facilitated by the fact that most of the regions of Ukraine were engulfed in an insurgency led by Bolsheviks or groups that stood on the Soviet platform. The uprisings that began in early November in the regions northeast of Kharkov, in the Poltava region, Chernigov region, the northern part of the Kherson and Odessa provinces, as well as in the eastern and southeastern parts of the Yekaterinoslav province, are led by underground Bolshevik and Bolshevik-Left SR regional revolutionary committees; the armed struggle of the insurgents is directed both against the authorities of the Directory and the German-volunteer-hetman military organizations, and against the landing troops of the French and Greeks that landed on the Black Sea coast in early January 1919 (in December 1918, after the opening of the straits, in the waters of the Black Sea the Allied fleet appeared) […].

Events developed in somewhat different ways in the hotbeds of counterrevolution outside the territory of German occupation. The events that took place in the Don and in the Kuban are especially characteristic.

As soon as the Don counter-revolution, with the indirect assistance of the German occupation, managed to re-gain a foothold in part of its territory, it put forward the Don government of Ataman Krasnov to power. In the spring of 1918 Krasnov [...] took a course towards a German orientation, considering the restoration of "one and indivisible Russia" as a rather distant goal. In the meantime, Krasnov viewed the region of the Don army as a completely independent state, on behalf of which he established diplomatic relations with Kiev, Yekaterinodar and Berlin. The Germans willingly supported Krasnov […]. This orientation was one of the reasons for shifting the center of gravity of the efforts of the Volunteer Army, which at that time was already headed by the general. Denikin, to the Kuban in order to avoid contact with the Germans [...].

The German revolution and the opening of the Black Sea for the Entente squadrons in connection with its expected widespread intervention in southern Russia contributed to the rapid change of the German orientation of Krasnov to the allied one. However, this did not save him from being absorbed by a new political organization in the person of the command of the Volunteer Army. Under pressure from the allies, who threatened to deprive Krasnov of all sources of supply, Krasnov at the beginning of 1919 had to submit to this new power militarily and politically, retaining only some autonomous rights to govern the Don region.

From chapter 6.
Strategic plans of the sides for 1919. Campaign on the South and North Caucasian fronts at the end of 1918. The outbreak of the struggle on the Ukrainian front.

[...] The growing successes of the Don Army should have stopped not so much due to the arrival of new Soviet reserves, but due to reasons of external and internal order that arose at that time in the theater of military operations and in the ranks of the Don Army. An external reason that worsened the overall strategic position of the Don Army was the departure of the Germans from the territory of Ukraine, which exposed the left flank of the entire Don Front. This phenomenon was still unnoticeable, but already from the second half of November 1918, units of the right-flank 8th Red Army began to infiltrate into the liberated territory, gradually hiding the left flank of the Voronezh group of the Don Army. Coming to the Ostrogozhsk-Korotoyak front, they already captured the station on November 9. Liski, from where, however, they were knocked out by the reserves of the enemy's Voronezh group [...]. At the same time, the 10th Army began advancing with its right flank at st. Ilovlya. In turn, the enemy, having underestimated the significance of exposing his left flank and weakening his forces in the Voronezh direction, concentrated his fist on the Tsaritsyno direction against the center of the 10th Army, pushing him towards Tsaritsyn.

Thanks to these actions of the enemy, two groups were formed on its front: the weakest - Voronezh and the strongest - Tsaritsyn, with their rear facing each other […].

The main command of the Red Army decided to complete the outlined success by delivering a decisive blow to the Don army [...]. In the future, the main command assumed to defeat the rest of Krasnov's forces on the right bank of the river. Don and those forces of the gene. Denikin, who could be there.

In order to link the actions of the front-line units with the reserves of the revolution behind the enemy's front line, the High Command provided for the sending of party members to the Donetsk basin to prepare an uprising of workers there, the formation of partisan detachments and their actions on the enemy's railway communications between st. Dashing and Rostov-on-Don. Thus, the essence of the plan of the commander-in-chief Vatsetis was reduced to the entry of the entire Southern Front with the right shoulder in the general direction of Tsaritsyn with the passing destruction of the weakest Voronezh enemy group [...]. This could entail the crowding of the main mass of the forces of the Southern Front in the Tsaritsyn region with its underdeveloped and poorly maintained network [...] of railways, which would make it extremely difficult for further regrouping and would place without support an extremely important for the Soviet power in political and economic terms Donetsk basin […].

Already at the end of December 1918, the volunteer command was preparing the transfer of one of its infantry divisions to the Donetsk basin (at the request of Ataman Krasnov, who had absolutely no free forces to form a new 600-kilometer front along the western borders of the Don region, which was exposed with the departure of the Germans), and the decomposition The Don army began to take [...] very tangible forms. At the end of December, whole Don units began to leave the front, some villages [...] established Soviet power [...].

The command of the Southern Front carried out the instructions given to it by setting [...] the following tasks for its units: Kozhevnikov's group by the end of the day on January 12 was supposed to go to the Kantemirovka-Mitrofanovka front; The 8th Army was to conduct an offensive along both banks of the Don; The 9th Army was heading for the section of the river. Khoper between Novokhopersk and Uryupinskaya, putting up a screen against the Tsaritsyno group of the enemy near Budarino; The 10th Army, defending the Tsaritsyn region, at the same time had to develop an offensive in the Kamyshinsky direction in order to unleash the left flank of the 9th Army.

In the offensive that had begun, the greatest territorial successes initially fell to the lot of Kozhevnikov's group; its movement was carried out almost without any resistance from the side of the enemy [...]. She pulled behind her and the right flank of the 8th Army, which was already on January 8 on the river. Black Kalitva. But on the other hand, the enemy at the same time struck a short blow at the junction of the 8th and 9th armies in the Voronezh direction [...]. However, the 9th Army managed to restore the situation, occupying Novokhopersk on January 15, and on January 21 - the village of Uryupinskaya [...]. Then the enemy's Voronezh group, threatened by coverage from three sides, began to retreat to the south. On the Tsaritsyno direction, the Don group pushed the 10th Red Army almost to the very outskirts of Tsaritsyno, cutting off the Kamyshin group from it [...].

The command of the Southern Front sought to build on the success of Kozhevnikov's group from the Valuyki-Kupyansk front by designating its deeper coverage of the Voronezh enemy group, for which Kozhevnikov's group had to concentrate its main forces in the Kantemirovka area, allocating one division to Luhansk (January 21), and then advance on Millerovo. The 9th Army was to rebuild its front to the southeast and head along the Povorino - Tsaritsyn railway; most of the forces of the 8th Army also had to operate on the left bank of the Don [...].

Thus, the command of the Southern Front was essentially left with the task of pursuing the remnants of the Don army, and on February 1, it issued the appropriate directive, directing the central armies (8th and 9th) directly to the south; Kozhevnikov's group from the Kantemirovka area was to enter the Kamenskaya-Millerovo area, and the 10th Army moved along the railway to Kalach at right angles to the axis of movement of the 9th Army.

On February 8 and 9, units of the 9th and 10th armies came into contact with each other in the area of \u200b\u200bst. Arched, which, in essence, ended the operation to defeat the Don Front, but the center of gravity of events was transferred to the Donetsk basin, where a fresh division of the Volunteer Army arrived and tied the operational freedom of Kozhevnikov's group.

Having landed in Mariupol on January 25, this division already on January 27-28 led, it is true, a repulsed attack on Luhansk, but delayed the advance of Kozhevnikov's units [...].

This is how the battles for the Donetsk Basin began [...]. The intensity of this struggle was due to the liberation of a significant part of the enemy forces from the North Caucasian theater, as a result of his decisive success in this theater [...].

The result of the 1918 winter campaign in the North Caucasus was unfavorable for the Soviet strategy. The large forces of the North Caucasian Front for a long time ceased to exist as an organized whole. This circumstance, having liberated the strong Kuban Volunteer Army, further negatively affected the course of the campaign at the Southern Theater […].

The tasks of the Soviet strategy in the Ukrainian theater were determined by the goals that the Soviet policy pursued in it [...]. These goals demanded [...] an offensive course of action, all the more so since December, the movement of the masses in Ukraine took place under Soviet slogans. Therefore, on January 4, 1919, it was decided to create a separate Ukrainian front with the subordination of its commander, Comrade Antonov-Ovseenko, to the commander-in-chief. The basis of this front was to be the 9th Infantry Division from the strategic reserve of the commander-in-chief. One division for the newly created front was to be formed by Comrade Antonov-Ovseenko, and the other by Comrade Kozhevnikov. The main purpose of the new front was the occupation and defense of the Donetsk Basin, for which it was necessary to closely link its actions with the actions of the Southern Front [...].

The task of the High Command was carried out by the movement of the troops of the Ukrainian Front by two main groups: one - (Kiev group) in the general direction to Kiev and the other (Kharkovskaya) - in the general direction to Lozovaya, and from there partially to Yekaterinoslav and the main mass - to the ports of Black and Azov seas. Thus, the units of the Ukrainian front flowed around the Donetsk basin [...].

The insignificance of the resistance of the small detachments of the Ukrainian Directory determined the rapidity of the advance of both groups. On January 20, their main forces were already on the Kruty - Poltava - Sinelnikovo front, and on February 5, after a little resistance, Kiev fell [...]. In the course of the events that followed, both groups were soon carried away in a further movement forward, following the spontaneous striving of the masses from the revolutionary centers to the outskirts of the country. The opposing side could not oppose anything to this desire due to [...] the weakness of its own forces, shared, moreover, [...] internal contradictions, as well as [...] the insufficiency of the forces of the Entente powers intended for active operations on the territory of Ukraine [...].

The internal contradictions of the local counter-revolutionary forces in the south of Ukraine were due to a fundamental divergence of their political programs, since some were supporters of an independent Ukraine, while others were supporters of a united and indivisible Russia. Both of them strove for the exclusive fullness of power on the Black Sea coast.

The formation of the Volunteer Army in Crimea proceeded more successfully, based on the personnel transferred by Denikin at the suggestion of the Crimean [...] government at the end of November to Kerch and Yalta. These cadres were deployed to the VI Corps, nominated by mid-December to the Berdyansk - Yekaterinoslav - Nizhne-Dneprovsk line. But already at the end of December this corps, under the attack of the rebels, cleans Yekaterinoslav, and then rolls back to the Crimean isthmuses [...].

The Entente's intervention [...] was dragged out. The French command, which had a number of difficult tasks in the Middle East and the Balkans, did not have free forces at hand, and those that existed did not show any particular desire to get involved in the Civil War. The mood of the troops made them fear the influence of the Bolshevik agitation on them [...].

Thus, only at the beginning of December 1918 [...] a free French division was found, which was sent on ships to Odessa [...]. At that time, the troops of the Ukrainian Directory appeared in front of Odessa, which delayed the capture of the city into their own hands, which was used by the French [...]. On January 20, 1919, the French landing was reinforced by Greek troops, and then they expanded their zone of occupation [...] by occupying Kherson and Nikolaev [...].

Meanwhile, the wave of revolutionary insurgent units continued to roll southward, washing away the weak units of the Directory in front of them or causing them to defect to their side. At the end of February 1919, one of these waves in the form of the detachments of Ataman Grigoriev, which had taken on a Soviet coloration, reached the forward points of the French occupation in Voznesensk and Tiraspol, and after a small skirmish forced their garrisons to withdraw. On March 2, Grigoriev appeared in the vicinity of Kherson and on March 9, after stubborn street battles, took possession of it, inflicting heavy damage on the Greek troops defending it, and on March 14 the French rushed to clear Nikolaev. The Greek troops remaining to defend Nikolaev were almost completely destroyed by the rebels.

These circumstances determined the further forward movement of the troops of the Ukrainian Front, decided by Antonov-Ovseenko on March 17. The main mass of the forces of the Kiev group was sent to Zhmerinka-Proskurov, since even more significant forces of the Ukrainian Directory continued to be held in this direction. The Kharkov group was targeting Odessa with the main part of its forces. On March 27, the Kiev group inflicted a decisive defeat on the troops of the Directory, throwing them back to the borders of Galicia, as a result of which the task of capturing Odessa was facilitated [...] by its cleansing by the Greco-French troops [...].

The result of these operations was a significant increase in the Ukrainian front in its length: its North-Western sector was in direct contact with the Polish troops, and the south-west - with the Romanian along the river. Dniester, while its southern border rested against the Black Sea. Only the Donetsk basin, in which a fierce struggle did not stop, went into its location with a deep wedge, causing an extension of its forces for its support from this wedge.

Together with the territorial successes, the physiognomy of the Ukrainian front also changed; the front lost its regular appearance, absorbing the masses of local partisan formations with their wavering and often anarchic ideology […].

From chapter 10.
Spring and Summer Campaigns of 1919 on the Southern Front

By February 9, 1919, the general grouping of both sides on the Southern Front was presented in the following form. As a result of the battles of a variable nature that began in the Donbass on January 27 between the Kozhevnikov group and the division of the Volunteer Army under the command of General. May-Mayevsky, Kozhevnikov's group occupied the front: Popasnaya - Lugansk, and then its front went: in the general direction to the Voronezh - Rostov-on-Don railway line [...]. Here, the right flank of the 8th Army adjoined the left flank of Kozhevnikov's group. Its front went further through Kashary (Upper Olkhovka) to the station Ust-Medveditskaya [...]. The front Ust-Medveditskaya - Kremenskaya was occupied by the 9th Army; The 10th Army [...] occupied the Ilovlya - Kotluban - Tsaritsyn region [...]. The 3rd brigade of the 1st Zadneprovsk division of the Ukrainian Front was sent here from the Yekaterinoslav region. This brigade was under the command of Makhno and had a purely partisan character [...].

Against these Red forces, White was positioned as follows. In the Donetsk basin, May-Mayevsky's division was in close combat contact with Kozhevnikov's group [...]. Further, the White front was formed by those leaving the river. Chir rearguards [...] Don army [...].

The struggle for the Donetsk Basin took on an extremely stringy character, with alternating private successes and private failures of both sides [...].

The operation to capture the Red Donbass was not completed until the spring thaw and ice drift on the rivers [...]. This circumstance played into the hands of the Whites, who, hiding behind the line of the flooded Donets, could focus their attention on putting the Don army in order [...]. Further actions of the whites (up to May) both on the banks of the Donets and in the Donbass are in the nature of active defense [...]. The flooding of Donets and Don also sharply worsened the strategic position of the Reds. The already weak operational communication between their armies was largely disrupted [...].

In such a situation, further efforts of the Reds are reduced to the desire to strengthen the position of the Kozhevnikov group, at this time renamed the 13th Army. For this, the red command decides to transfer the entire 8th army to the right bank of the Donets, concentrating it in the Veselogorsk-Lugansk region. From here, this army should attack the enemy along the right bank of the Donets [...]. The fight at this time is in the nature of a series of private battles. Individual points on the ground change hands. This struggle [...] strains the strength of the army. It shows signs of decomposition. The neighborhood of the partisans Makhno has a corrupting effect on its young parts [...].

Against these forces of the Reds, the Whites were located in two groups: in the southern part of the Donetsk basin were parts of the gene. May-Mayevsky [...], and to the south-east of Lugansk, a group of gene. Pokrovsky [...].

Taking advantage of their small numerical superiority, the Reds decided to deliver the main blow to the May-Mayevsky group. A small barrier was left against Pokrovsky [...]. The success of the operations was based on calculating the stability of the red barrier against the Pokrovsky group and the timely arrival of the 12th rifle division in Lugansk. But the enemy thwarted this plan. Pokrovsky's group itself went on the offensive [...]. On March 29, the enemy crushed the 41st Infantry Division with superior forces and threw it back to Lugansk. The 8th Army began to gradually withdraw its units to help the screen. By April 2, the Whites had thrown the 8th Army back to Lugansk [...]. The 13th Army and Makhno's partisans were left to their own forces. They achieved some local successes, but lost them after May-Mayevsky, having got rid of the threat of the 8th Army, attacked them with his cavalry.

The failure of this offensive had a very heavy impact on the position of the Southern Red Front, since in time it coincided with the beginning of the Cossack uprising in the rear, in the area of \u200b\u200bst. Veshenskaya and Kazanskaya. This uprising was raised by the Cossacks, which at the end of 1918 expressed obedience to the Soviet regime and were disbanded to their homes by whole regiments with weapons in their hands [...]. Now the Cossacks spoke under the slogans of the Socialist Revolutionaries. The uprising [...] spread in all directions from these villages. It severely limited the operational capabilities of the Southern Front [...].

Nevertheless, the Reds stubbornly strove to fulfill the set [...] task. Now the 9th Army was also involved in the focus of the struggle for the Donetsk basin. Two divisions of this army (16th and 23rd Infantry) [...] were to concentrate in the area of \u200b\u200bst. Gundorovskaya and Novo-Bozhedarovka. The 12th Infantry Division of the 8th Army was pulling up to the Mityakinskaya area. These three divisions would jointly attack the right flank of the Volunteer Army, while 8th Army attacked it from the front.

But this time the plan was thwarted by the commander of the 9th Vsevolodov, who [...] plotted treason. Therefore, he concentrated the 23rd Infantry Division not in the indicated area, but [...] 100 km from the 8th Army. The 23rd division crossed the Donets on April 12 and captured st. Repnaya, but was surrounded on three sides by the enemy and, with heavy losses, was thrown back onto the left bank of the Donets [...].

For the reasons noted, the offensive of the 8th Army, undertaken by it on April 13, led [...] to insignificant results. Only by April 26 did it reach the line 10 km south of st. Pervozvanovka and 35 km south-east of Lugansk. On this front, the 8th Army was attacked by an enemy strike group consisting of Shkuro's cavalry corps. The latter, with a series of successive blows, shook the front of the 8th Army and forced it to besiege it back. During this retreat, on May 5, 1919, the Whites managed to break into Lugansk [...].

The first half of May is characterized by a number of White attempts to take the initiative into their own hands and from active defense to go over to a broad offensive [...]. During the previous period of the campaign, the Red Southern Front was gradually losing its numerical superiority over the enemy [...]. To the best of its strength and capabilities, the Red High Command took all measures to strengthen the Southern Front. But the exhaustion of large strategic reserves inside the country was reflected in the nature of reinforcements received in small packages. However, a significant part of these reinforcements was absorbed in the fight against the Veshensky uprising. There were other reasons that dissipated these reinforcements to plug holes instead of forming a powerful fist out of them. These reasons consisted in the strong devastation of the front ranks by typhoid epidemics and the decomposition of some military units. The process of decay most strongly captured the 13th Army. It consisted mainly of former partisan units. She bore the heaviest burden of the battles for Donbass. All these reasons finally undermined the internal forces of the army. From the middle of April, she was already incapable of combat and was a passive witness to the events taking place in the sector of the 8th Army [...].

By this time, the Ukrainian front had assumed an almost partisan appearance. Its regular units were drowning and dissolving in the midst of partisan detachments, which clung to them from all sides. In the partisan mass all the time […] processes of internal decomposition […] were going on. The kulak element, which overwhelmed the ranks of such detachments, strove for its own political formation and entry into the arena of struggle as an independent force. From the Red Army begins a series of falling away of its occasional fellow travelers. Ataman Grigoriev in Ukraine at the beginning of May 1919 at the head of his detachment [...] openly opposes the Soviet regime under the Socialist-Revolutionary slogans. His gangs are spreading in a wide wave across Ukraine, threatening Odessa and Nikolaev [...].

The 8th Army, after the loss of Lugansk, settled on the Gorodishche front - Art. Rodakovo - Veselogorsk […]. The 13th Army was to develop a blow with its left flank in the direction of Lugansk, pinning down the enemy with attacks along its entire front. The 8th Army [...] was to, together with units of the 2nd Ukrainian Army (Makhno partisans), develop a strong blow against the left flank and into the rear of the Volunteer Army [...]. The offensive began on May 14. Initially, the reds pushed the whites; On May 15, Luhansk passed back into the hands of the Reds [...].

Soviet Russia experienced a very difficult time during the Civil War. In 1918, foreign invaders (British, French, American, Japanese troops) and the forces of the White movement surrounded the Soviet Republic with a ring of fronts.

In order to repulse the onslaught of opponents, the Soviet government began to implement measures to mobilize all forces and turn the country into a single military camp. All available resources were collected for the needs of the country's defense. The construction of the Red Army proceeded at a rapid pace. The general leadership of the country was concentrated in the Council of Labor and Defense (STO), which was headed by V.I. Lenin.

To coordinate the actions of military institutions and fronts, Revolutionary Military Council (RVS).

In the summer and autumn of 1918, two main fronts were defined - the Eastern and the Southern.

Eastern front.

In the eastern direction, in the Volga and Ural region, the performance of large forces of White Czechs and White Guards merged with a wave of kulak revolts. He was appointed commander of the Eastern Front in July 1918 by I.I. Vatsetis (in 1919-1920 the front was headed by S.S.Kamenev, M.V. Frunze). The Red Army was opposed by forces under the leadership of Ataman Dutov (the Ural Cossack army), later - Admiral Kolchak. The Red Army, through great efforts, managed to push these forces back beyond the Urals.

Southern front.

From October 1918, fierce fighting broke out on the Southern Front, which covered the regions of the Don, the Lower Volga and the North Caucasus. The forces of the Red Army were commanded by V.M. Gittis and V.A. Antonov-Ovseenko (Ukrainian front). Here, the Soviet troops had to repel the onslaught of the Don White Cossack Army of Ataman P.N. Krasnov, who tried to take Tsaritsyn and cut the Volga, and the Volunteer Army of General L.I. Denikin, who managed to capture the Kuban. By March 1919, the Don army was defeated, its remnants retreated under the cover of the Volunteer Army.

Russia in a ring of fronts.

The spring of 1919 became very difficult for the Soviet Republic. An even more powerful offensive was being prepared against the Soviet state. It was supposed to involve the White Guard armies, as well as the troops of the Entente and other states neighboring Russia. The offensive of the hostile forces had to start from different parts of Russia and head towards its center - Moscow.

The offensive of the interventionists and the White Guards began at the same time on six fronts. The main blow was planned to be delivered by the forces of the Kolchak army, which was actively supported by the Entente countries. The offensive of troops under the command of A.V. Kolchak began on March 4, 1919. His performance was supported by other counter-revolutionary forces: in the western direction - the White Poles, and near Petrograd - General N.N. Yudenich, in the north - the white army of General E.K. Miller, in the south - the troops of A.I. Denikin. Despite the difficult situation, the Soviet state managed to withstand.

Southwestern Front.

In April 1920, Poland entered the war with Soviet Russia. The Southwestern Front was commanded by A.I. Egorov, Western - M.N. Tukhachevsky. By the spring of 1920, the Civil War was drawing to a close.

In 1920 the Red Army repelled the Polish offensive and defeated the armies of P.N. Wrangel.

Question 01. What program did the Socialist-Revolutionary-Menshevik governments of the Volga and Siberia put forward? Why couldn't they hold on to power?

Answer. The Governments of the Volga region and Siberia did not announce a coherent program, except for an armed struggle against the power of the Bolsheviks, only slogans:

1) Power is not to the Soviets, but to the Constituent Assembly!

2) Liquidation of the Brest Peace!

During the Civil War, the real power is in the hands of the one who controls the army. The governments of Siberia and the Volga region were unable to do this partly because the army officers did not want to see the socialists as their chiefs, partly because a mechanism for control over the army was not developed (the institution of commissars in the Red Army is ambiguous, but it certainly was such a means of control) ...

Question 02. How did the events develop on the Eastern Front in 1918-1919? Why did the Red Army manage to defeat Kolchak?

Answer. After the first successes of the Czechoslovak Corps, the White offensive in the east was stopped in September 1918. After Kolchak came to power and the general mobilization he carried out, the offensive, which resumed in March and April 1918, was successful. However, on April 28, the Red Army launched a counteroffensive. After that, the offensive of the Reds periodically managed to slow down, but it was never possible to stop it until the displacement of the Kolchak government as a result of December 24 in Irkutsk.

Kolchak's army lost because, like the Red Army, it was not a pre-revolutionary Russian, but an army organized anew, practically from scratch, and organized worse than the Red Army. In both armies there were enough pre-revolutionary officers, including officers of the imperial general staff, so it cannot be said that the commanders on the one hand had more experience. In both armies, there were many young people in command positions, who rose immediately from the commander of almost a company to the commander of an army and higher, but the red commanders (the most famous of them - M.N. Tukhachevsky) compensated for the lack of experience and appropriate education with talent, among the whites his commanders were not enough. The White Army turned out to be worse organized. It consisted of many units (armies, divisions), and each of these units required a headquarters. There were almost more people in the headquarters than in the battle itself. There is too much bureaucracy in the army. Moreover, these headquarters, feeling that they were the power, were engaged in embezzlement on a huge scale. In the rear of the white armies, peasant uprisings broke out one after another, they became more and more, and the government was unable to develop not only methods of preventing them, but also methods of combating them, except for brutal punitive operations that punished both the right and the guilty, which caused more more outrage and new uprisings. In general, it can be said that the reasons for Kolchak's defeat mainly lie in the field of administrative-military strategic and tactical decisions; they have nothing to do with the superiority of one or another ideology.

Question 03. How did the events develop on the Southern Front in 1918-1919?

Answer. In the spring of 1918, the history of the Don Army began, which, with the support of the Germans, launched an offensive against the Red Army. Only in September 1918, the Southern Front of the Red Army, organized according to all the rules, appeared. By November 1918, this front was broken through, the White attack began to the north, but it was established the next month. At the same time, throughout this year, regardless of the Don Army, the Volunteer Army, oriented towards the Entente countries, continued to operate (after the death of Lavr Kornilov, it was led by Anton Denikin). The two armies initially had no contact. But after the defeat of Germany, what separated them disappeared and the white forces of the south of Russia all united under the command of Denikin. This united army organized a powerful offensive, unfortunately, not simultaneous with Kolchak's troops. It began only in May 1919, after the end of the White offensive in the east. This impulse fizzled out next month. A balance of forces was established. However, in October 1919, the Red Army was able to go south to the offensive, dismember the forces of the whites and destroy their North Caucasian grouping. Only the Crimean peninsula remained in the hands of the anti-Bolshevik forces, Denikin was removed from his post, and Baron Pyotr Wrangel took command of this group.

Question 04. What are the goals and characteristics of foreign intervention in the internal affairs of Russia?

Answer. Each state had its own goals of intervention in the confrontation between whites and reds in Russia. Germany hoped for the weakening of Russia, the creation of a number of buffer states on the border. She hoped for the weakening of Russia, as well as for the expansion of its zone of influence and Japan. Until November 1918, the Entente countries sought to force Russia to abandon the Brest-Litovsk Peace and resume the war (the hostilities of 1918 on the Western Front were especially fierce); after the end of the First World War, they sought to destroy the Bolshevik system for other reasons: because of the refusal of the Soviet the debts of the Russian Empire (very significant) and the open desire of the Bolsheviks to make a world revolution, that is, to overthrow the governments of other countries. However, the main feature of all interventions was the reliance on certain forces within Russia and the limited nature of the intervention: very few troops were usually sent out.

Question 05. What were the features of the Soviet-Polish war? What are its results?

Answer. Features:

1) the slogan of the restoration of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth within the borders of 1772 was popular in Poland;

2) the beginning of the war was officially presented as assistance to the Ukrainian people in the struggle against the Bolsheviks;

3) the Soviet leadership expected to start a world revolution in Poland;

4) the cause of the defeat of the Red Army was both the patriotism of the citizens of the newly formed Polish state and the miscalculations of the Soviet command.

As a result of the war, under the terms of the Peace of Riga in 1921, the territories of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus, that is, practically the territory of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth within the borders of 1772, excluding the eastern regions of Belarus, retreated to Poland.