Commander of the Civil War. White Army in the Civil War

The Reds played a decisive role in the civil war and became the driving mechanism for the creation of the USSR.

With their powerful propaganda, they managed to win the commitment of thousands of people and unite them with the idea of creating an ideal country of workers.

Creation of the Red Army

The Red Army was created by a special decree on January 15, 1918. These were voluntary formations from the worker-peasant part of the population.

However, the principle of voluntariness brought with it disunity and decentralization in the command of the army, from which discipline and combat effectiveness suffered. This forced Lenin to declare universal military service for men aged 18-40.

The Bolsheviks created a network of schools for the training of recruits, who studied not only the art of war, but also underwent political education. Commander training courses were created, for which the most outstanding Red Army soldiers were recruited.

The main victories of the red army

The Reds in the civil war mobilized all possible economic and human resources to win. After the annulment of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, the Soviets began to expel German troops from the occupied regions. Then the most turbulent period of the civil war began.

The Reds managed to defend the Southern Front, despite the considerable efforts it took to fight the Don Army. Then the Bolsheviks launched a counteroffensive and won back significant territories. On the Eastern Front, a very unfavorable situation developed for the Reds. Here the offensive was launched by very large-scale and strong troops of Kolchak.

Alarmed by such events, Lenin resorted to emergency measures, and the White Guards were defeated. Simultaneous anti-Soviet speeches and the entry into the struggle of the Volunteer Army of Denikin became a critical moment for the Bolshevik government. However, the immediate mobilization of all possible resources helped the Reds win.

War with Poland and the end of the civil war

In April 1920 Poland decided to enter Kyiv with the intention of liberating Ukraine from illegal Soviet rule and restoring its independence. However, the people took this as an attempt to occupy their territory. The Soviet commanders took advantage of this mood of the Ukrainians. The troops of the Western and Southwestern fronts were sent to fight against Poland.

Soon Kyiv was liberated from the Polish offensive. This revived hopes for an early world revolution in Europe. But, having entered the territory of the attackers, the Reds received a powerful rebuff and their intentions quickly cooled. In the light of such events, the Bolsheviks signed a peace treaty with Poland.

reds in civil war photo

After that, the Reds concentrated all their attention on the remnants of the Whites under the command of Wrangel. These fights were incredibly furious and cruel. However, the Reds still forced the Whites to surrender.

Notable Red Leaders

Frunze Mikhail Vasilievich. Under his command, the Reds carried out successful operations against the White Guard troops of Kolchak, defeated the Wrangel army in the territory of Northern Tavria and Crimea;
Tukhachevsky Mikhail Nikolaevich. He was the commander of the troops of the Eastern and Caucasian Fronts, with his army he cleared the Urals and Siberia from the White Guards;
Voroshilov Kliment Efremovich. He was one of the first marshals of the Soviet Union. Participated in the organization of the Revolutionary Military Council of the 1st Cavalry Army. With his troops, he liquidated the Kronstadt rebellion;
Chapaev Vasily Ivanovich. He commanded a division that liberated Uralsk. When the whites suddenly attacked the reds, they fought courageously. And, having spent all the cartridges, the wounded Chapaev started running across the Ural River, but was killed;
Budyonny Semyon Mikhailovich The creator of the Cavalry Army, which defeated the Whites in the Voronezh-Kastornensky operation. The ideological inspirer of the military-political movement of the Red Cossacks in Russia.

When the workers' and peasants' army showed its vulnerability, former tsarist commanders who were their enemies began to be recruited into the ranks of the Reds.
After the assassination attempt on Lenin, the Reds dealt particularly cruelly with 500 hostages. On the line between the rear and the front, there were barrage detachments that fought desertion by shooting.

Let's recall the curious stories from the life of Chapaev, Budyonny, Frunze, Shchors and Kotovsky.
Semyon Budyonny was born on April 25, 1883. Songs and legends were composed about the chief cavalryman of the Land of the Soviets, cities and towns were named after him. In the memory of many generations, the commander of the Cavalry remained a folk hero. One of the first Soviet marshals, three times Hero of the Soviet Union, lived to be 90 years old.

Vasily Chapaev

1. In February 1887, Vasily Chapaev was born in the village of Budaika, Cheboksary district, Kazan province. At baptism, he was recorded as Gavrilov. He inherited the nickname "Chapai", or rather "Chapai", from his father, and he inherited from his grandfather Stepan, who worked as a senior in the cooperative of loaders and constantly urged the workers by shouting: "Chop, chop!" The word meant "chain", that is, "take". The nickname "Chapai" remained with Stepan Gavrilovich. The nickname “Chapaevs” was assigned to the descendants, which then became the official surname.

Vasily Chapaev on a postcard from IZOGIZ, USSR

2. Vasily Chapaev was almost the first of the red commanders to move to a car. It was the technique that was the real weakness of the division commander. At first he liked the American "Stever", then this car seemed to him shaky. They sent a bright red chic Packard to replace it. However, this machine was not suitable for military operations in the steppe. Therefore, under Chapaev, two Fords were always on duty, easily squeezing up to 70 miles per hour off-road.

When subordinates did not go on duty, the division commander raged: “Comrade Khvesin! I will complain about you to the CEC! You give me an order and demand that I carry it out, but I can’t walk along the entire front, it’s impossible for me to ride. I demand to immediately send for the division and for the cause of the revolution one motorcycle with a sidecar, two cars, four trucks for supplying supplies!

Vasily Ivanovich personally selected drivers. One of them, Nikolai Ivanov, was taken almost by force from Chapaev to Moscow and made the personal driver of Lenin's sister, Anna Ulyanova-Elizarova.
The nickname "Chapai", or rather, "Chapai", Vasily Ivanovich inherited from his grandfather.

3. Chapaev did not learn to read and write, but tried to get a higher military education. It is known that Vasily Ivanovich displayed in his questionnaire for those entering the accelerated course of the Academy of the General Staff, filled out by him personally. Question: “Are you an active party member? What was your activity? Answer: “I belong. Formed seven regiments of the Red Army. Question: What awards do you have? Answer: “Georgievsky Cavalier of four degrees. The watch was also handed over. Question: What is your general education? Answer: Self-taught. And, finally, the most interesting thing is the conclusion of the attestation commission: “Enroll as having a revolutionary military experience. Almost illiterate."

Semyon Budyonny

1. The legendary marshal managed to start a family only on the third attempt. The first wife, a front-line friend Nadezhda, accidentally shot herself with a pistol. About his second wife, Olga Stefanovna, Budyonny himself wrote to the Chief Military Prosecutor's Office: “In the first months of 1937 ... I.V. Stalin said in a conversation with me that, as he knows from Yezhov’s information, my wife is Budyonny-Mikhailova Olga Stefanovna behaves indecently and thereby compromises me and that, he emphasized, this is unprofitable for us in any way, we will not allow this to anyone ... ”Olga ended up in the camps ... The second cousin of the marshal became the third wife. She was 34 years younger than Semyon Mikhailovich, but Budyonny fell in love like a boy. “Hello, my dear mother! I received your letter and remembered September 20, which bound us for life, ”he wrote from the front of Mary. - It seems to me that you and I grew up together since childhood. I love you infinitely and until the end of my last heartbeat I will love you. You are my most beloved creature, you, who brought happiness - our own children ... Hello to you, my dear, I kiss you tightly, your Semyon.
“This, Semyon, is not your mustache, but a folk one ...,” said Frunze to Budyonny when he decided to shave them off.

2. There is a legend that during the battles for the Crimea, when Budyonny was checking captured cartridges - whether they were smokeless or not, he brought a cigarette to them. The gunpowder flared up and scorched one mustache, which turned gray. Since then, Semyon Mikhailovich tinted it. Budyonny wanted to completely shave off his mustache, but Mikhail Frunze dissuaded him: “This, Semyon, is not your mustache, but a folk one ...”

Semyon Budyonny on a postcard from IZOGIZ, USSR

3. Semyon Budyonny until recent years was an excellent rider. In Moscow, on Kutuzovsky Prospekt, near the panorama, there is a famous monument - Kutuzov on horseback. So, the sculptor Tomsky sculpted the commander's horse from Budyonny's horse. It was Semyon Mikhailovich's favorite - the Sophist. He was incredibly handsome - Don breed, reddish color. When the marshal came to Tomsky to visit the horse, they say, the Sophist found out from the engine of the car that his owner had arrived. And when Budyonny was gone, the Sophist wept like a man.

Mikhail Frunze

1. Mikhail Vasilyevich Frunze was born in the city of Pishpek in the family of a retired paramedic and a Voronezh peasant woman. Misha was the second of five children. His father died early (the future commander was then only 12 years old), the family was in need, and the state paid for the education of two older brothers. Subjects were easy for Misha, especially languages, and the director of the gymnasium considered the child to be a genius. Mikhail graduated from the educational institution in 1904 with a gold medal, without exams he was enrolled in the economic department of the St. Petersburg Polytechnic University.

Mikhail Frunze on a postcard from IZOGIZ, USSR

2. Frunze later recalled his impetuous military career: he received his primary military education by shooting at officers in Shuya, the secondary education against Kolchak, and the higher education on the Southern Front, defeating Wrangel. Mikhail Vasilievich possessed personal courage, he liked to be in front of the troops: in 1919, near Ufa, the commander was even shell-shocked. Frunze did not hesitate to punish the insurgent peasants for "class irresponsibility." But most importantly, he showed the talent of the organizer and the ability to select competent specialists. True, the chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council, Lev Trotsky, did not delight in this gift. In his opinion, the military leader "was fascinated by abstract schemes, he was poorly versed in people and easily fell under the influence of specialists, mostly secondary ones."
The children of Mikhail Frunze - Tanya and Timur - were raised by Kliment Voroshilov.

3. After a car accident, Frunze once again developed a stomach ulcer - he caught the disease while still a prisoner of the Vladimir Central. The People's Commissariat of Defense did not survive the subsequent operation. According to the official version, the cause of death was a combination of hard-to-diagnose diseases that led to heart failure. But a year later, the writer Boris Pilnyak put forward the version that Stalin thus got rid of a potential competitor. By the way, shortly before the death of Mikhail Vasilyevich, an article was published in the English "Airplane" where he was called the "Russian Napoleon". Meanwhile, Frunze's wife could not bear the death of her husband: in despair, the woman committed suicide. Their children - Tanya and Timur - were raised by Kliment Voroshilov.

Grigory Kotovsky

1. Grigory Ivanovich Kotovsky, the son of an engineer-nobleman, began his bandit career by killing the father of his beloved, Prince Kantakuzin, who opposed the meetings of lovers. At the same time, he deprived his passion of property by burning her estate. Hiding in the woods, Kotovsky put together a gang, which included former convicts and other professional criminals. Their robberies, murders, robberies, extortion shook the whole of Bessarabia. All this was done with audacity, cynicism and frontierism. More than once, law enforcement officers caught the adventurer, but thanks to his great physical strength and dexterity, he managed to escape every time. In 1907, Kotovsky was sentenced to 12 years of hard labor, but in 1913 he fled from Nerchinsk and already in 1915 led a new gang in his native land.

Grigory Kotovsky on a postcard from IZOGIZ, USSR

2. Kotovsky gave the impression of an intelligent, courteous person, easily aroused the sympathy of many. Contemporaries pointed to the enormous strength of Gregory. From childhood, he began to engage in weight lifting, boxing, and loved horse racing. In life, this was very useful to him: strength gave independence, power, frightened enemies and victims. Kotovsky of that time is steel fists, a frantic temper and a craving for all sorts of pleasures. In cities, he always appeared under the guise of a rich, elegant aristocrat, posing as a landowner, merchant, company representative, manager, machinist, representative for the procurement of products for the army. He liked to visit the theaters, boasting about his brutal appetite, for example, scrambled eggs from 25 eggs. Thoroughbred horses, gambling and women were his weakness.
The weakness of Grigory Kotovsky was thoroughbred horses, gambling and women.

3. The death of Grigory Ivanovich is shrouded in the same unsolved mystery as his life. According to one version, the new economic policy of the Soviet state allowed the legendary brigade commander to quite legally and legally engage in big business. Under his command was a whole network of sugar factories in Uman, trade in meat, bread, soap, tanneries and cotton factories. Some hop plantations in the subsidiary farm of the 13th Cavalry Regiment brought up to 1.5 million gold rubles per year of net profit. Kotovsky is also credited with the idea of creating the Moldavian autonomy, in which he wanted to rule over a kind of Soviet prince. Be that as it may, the appetites of Grigory Ivanovich began to irritate the Soviet "top".

Nikolai Shchors

1. Nikolai Shchors was born in the small town of Snovsk. In 1909 he graduated from the parochial school. The career of a priest did not suit him very much, but Nikolai decided to go to the seminary. The son of a railroad engineer did not want to turn bolts and nuts in the depot. When the first shots of the German war rang out, Shchors enthusiastically responded to the call to the army. Being a literate guy, he was immediately assigned to the Kyiv school of military paramedics. After a year and a half of fighting, he moved from the trenches of the First World War to the audience of the Poltava Military School, which trained junior warrant officers for the active army at an accelerated four-month course. Clever and sensitive by nature, Nikolai realized that the school produced only semblances of "their nobility." This fixed in him a peculiar complex of resentment at the inequality of real officers and "cannon fodder". Therefore, over time, Shchors willingly went under the scarlet banners, forgetting about the rank of second lieutenant received on the eve of the February revolution.
Until 1935, the name of Shchors was not widely known, even the TSB did not mention him.

2. Until 1935, the name of Shchors was not widely known, even the TSB did not mention him. In February 1935, presenting Alexander Dovzhenko with the Order of Lenin, Stalin suggested that the artist create a film about the "Ukrainian Chapaev", which was done. Later, several books, songs, even an opera were written about Shchors, schools, streets, villages and even a city were named after him. In 1936, Matvey Blanter (music) and Mikhail Golodny (lyrics) wrote The Song of Shchors.

Nikolai Shchors on a postcard from IZOGIZ, USSR

3. When in 1949 the body of Nikolai Shchors was exhumed in Kuibyshev, it was found well-preserved, practically incorrupt, although it had lain in a coffin for 30 years. This is explained by the fact that when Shchors was buried in 1919, his body was previously embalmed, soaked in a steep solution of table salt and placed in a sealed zinc coffin.

History is written by the winners. We know a lot about the heroes of the Red Army, but almost nothing about the heroes of the White Army. Let's fill this gap.

Anatoly Pepelyaev

Anatoly Pepelyaev became the youngest general in Siberia - at the age of 27. Prior to this, the White Guards under his command took Tomsk, Novonikolaevsk (Novosibirsk), Krasnoyarsk, Verkhneudinsk and Chita.
When Pepelyaev’s troops occupied Perm abandoned by the Bolsheviks, about 20,000 Red Army soldiers were captured by the young general, who, on his orders, were released home. Perm was liberated from the Reds on the day of the 128th anniversary of the capture of Ishmael, and the soldiers began to call Pepelyaev "Siberian Suvorov."

Sergei Ulagay

Sergei Ulagay, a Kuban Cossack of Circassian origin, was one of the most prominent cavalry commanders of the White Army. He made a serious contribution to the defeat of the North Caucasian front of the Reds, but especially the 2nd Kuban Corps Ulagay distinguished himself during the capture of the "Russian Verdun" - Tsaritsyn - in June 1919.

General Ulagay went down in history as the commander of the special forces group of the Russian Volunteer Army, General Wrangel, who landed troops from the Crimea to the Kuban in August 1920. To command the landing force, Wrangel chose Ulagay "as a popular Kuban general, it seems, the only one of the famous who did not stain himself with robbery."

Alexander Dolgorukov

The hero of the First World War, who for his exploits was awarded admission to the retinue of His Imperial Majesty, Alexander Dolgorukov proved himself in the Civil War. On September 30, 1919, his 4th Rifle Division in a bayonet battle forced the Soviet troops to retreat; Dolgorukov captured the crossing over the Plyussa River, which soon made it possible to occupy Struga Beliye.
Dolgorukov got into literature. In the novel by Mikhail Bulgakov "The White Guard" he is bred under the name of General Belorukov, and is also mentioned in the first volume of the trilogy of Alexei Tolstoy "Walking through the torments" (attack of the cavalry guards in the battle of Kaushen).

Vladimir Kappel

The episode from the film "Chapaev", where the Kappelites go on a "psychic attack", is fictional - Chapaev and Kappel never crossed paths on the battlefield. But Kappel was a legend without cinema.

During the capture of Kazan on August 7, 1918, he lost only 25 people. In his reports on successful operations, Kappel did not mention himself, explaining the victory by the heroism of his subordinates, up to the sisters of mercy.
During the Great Siberian Ice Campaign, Kappel got frostbite on the feet of both legs - they had to be amputated without anesthesia. He continued to lead the troops and refused a place on the hospital train.
The last words of the general were: "Let the troops know that I was devoted to them, that I loved them and proved it with my death among them."

Mikhail Drozdovsky

Mikhail Drozdovsky with a volunteer detachment of 1,000 people walked 1,700 km from Yassy to Rostov, freed him from the Bolsheviks, then helped the Cossacks defend Novocherkassk.

Drozdovsky's detachment participated in the liberation of both the Kuban and the North Caucasus. Drozdovsky was called "the crusader of the crucified Motherland." Here is his description from Kravchenko's book “Drozdovites from Iasi to Gallipoli”: “Nervous, thin, Colonel Drozdovsky was a type of ascetic warrior: he did not drink, did not smoke and did not pay attention to the blessings of life; always - from Jassy until death - in the same worn jacket, with a worn St. George ribbon in his buttonhole; out of modesty, he did not wear the order itself.

Alexander Kutepov

A colleague of Kutepov’s on the fronts of the First World War wrote about him: “Kutepov’s name has become a household name. It means fidelity to duty, calm determination, intense sacrificial impulse, cold, sometimes cruel will and ... clean hands - and all this is brought and given to the service of the Motherland.

In January 1918, Kutepov twice defeated the Red troops under the command of Sievers near Matveev Kurgan. According to Anton Denikin, "this was the first serious battle in which the art and enthusiasm of the officer detachments were opposed to the furious pressure of the unorganized and badly managed Bolsheviks, mostly sailors."

Sergey Markov

The White Guards called Sergei Markov the "White Knight", "the sword of General Kornilov", the "God of War", and after the battle at the village of Medvedovskaya - the "Guardian Angel". In this battle, Markov managed to save the remnants of the Volunteer Army retreating from Ekaterinograd, destroy and capture the armored train of the Reds, and get a lot of weapons and ammunition. When Markov died, Anton Denikin wrote on his wreath: "Both life and death - for the happiness of the Motherland."

Mikhail Zhebrak-Rusanovich

For the White Guards, Colonel Zhebrak-Rusanovich was a cult figure. For personal prowess, his name was sung in the military folklore of the Volunteer Army.
He firmly believed that "there will be no Bolshevism, but there will be only one United Great Indivisible Russia." It was Zhebrak who brought the Andreevsky flag with his detachment to the headquarters of the Volunteer Army, and soon he became the battle flag of the Drozdovsky brigade.
He died heroically, personally leading the attack of two battalions on the superior forces of the Red Army.

Viktor Molchanov

The Izhevsk division of Viktor Molchanov was awarded Kolchak's special attention - he handed her the St. George banner, and attached the St. George crosses to the banners of a number of regiments. During the Great Siberian Ice Campaign, Molchanov commanded the rearguard of the 3rd Army and covered the retreat of the main forces of General Kappel. After his death, he led the vanguard of the white troops.
At the head of the Insurrectionary Army, Molchanov occupied almost all of Primorye and Khabarovsk.

Innokenty Smolin

In the summer and autumn of 1918, at the head of the partisan detachment of his own name, Innokenty Smolin successfully operated in the rear of the Reds, captured two armored trains. Smolin's partisans played an important role in the capture of Tobolsk.

Mikhail Smolin participated in the Great Siberian Ice Campaign, commanded a group of troops of the 4th Siberian Rifle Division, which, numbering more than 1,800 fighters, came to Chita on March 4, 1920.
Smolin died in Tahiti. In the last years of his life he wrote memoirs.

Sergei Voitsekhovsky

General Voitsekhovsky accomplished many feats, performing the seemingly impossible tasks of the command of the White Army. A faithful “Kolchakist”, after the death of the admiral, he abandoned the assault on Irkutsk and led the remnants of the Kolchak army to Transbaikalia on the ice of Baikal.

In 1939, in exile, being one of the highest Czechoslovak generals, Wojciechowski advocated resistance to the Germans and created the underground organization Obrana národa ("Protection of the People"). Arrested by SMERSH in 1945. Repressed, died in a camp near Taishet.

Erast Hyacinths

Erast Hyacinths in the First World War became the owner of a full set of orders available to the chief officer of the Russian Imperial Army.
After the revolution, he was obsessed with the idea of overthrowing the Bolsheviks and even occupied with friends a number of houses around the Kremlin in order to start resistance from there, but in time he realized the futility of such tactics and joined the White Army, becoming one of the most productive scouts.
In exile, on the eve of and during the Second World War, he took an open anti-Nazi position and miraculously avoided being sent to a concentration camp. After the war, he resisted the forced repatriation of "displaced persons" to the USSR.

Mikhail Yaroslavtsev (Archimandrite Mitrofan)

During the Civil War, Mikhail Yaroslavtsev showed himself to be an energetic commander and distinguished himself by personal prowess in several battles.
Yaroslavtsev embarked on the path of spiritual service already in exile, after the death of his wife on December 31, 1932.

In May 1949, hegumen Mitrofan was elevated to the rank of archimandrite by Metropolitan Seraphim (Lukyanov).

Contemporaries wrote about him: "Always impeccable in the performance of his duty, richly gifted with excellent spiritual qualities, he was a true consolation for very many of his flock ...".

He was rector of the Church of the Resurrection in Rabat and defended the unity of the Russian Orthodox community in Morocco with the Moscow Patriarchate.

Pavel Shatilov is a hereditary general, both his father and his grandfather were generals. He especially distinguished himself in the spring of 1919, when, in an operation in the area of the Manych River, he defeated a 30,000-strong group of Reds.

Pyotr Wrangel, whose chief of staff was later Shatilov, spoke of him as follows: "a brilliant mind, outstanding abilities, having great military experience and knowledge, with great capacity for work, he was able to work with a minimum expenditure of time."

In the autumn of 1920, it was Shatilov who led the emigration of whites from the Crimea.

* * *

Word from the author

If the First World War became the Calvary of the Russian Empire, then, in fact, the Civil War that emerged from it bloodily ended old Russia, starting with a coup d'état in October 1917 and ending in 1922 on the shores of the Sea of Japan in Primorye. The world war heated class contradictions to the limit, to which its disasters were added. In other words, the power of the Romanov dynasty did not stand the test of the war, as well as the three empires that disappeared with it into history - German, Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman.

The Civil War divided Russia into two irreconcilable camps - the Red Cause and the White Cause. If the vanquished fought to preserve the foundations of the old statehood, then the vanquished dreamed of a world revolution in which Soviet Russia was to become the first proletarian bastion. Those who, for various reasons, did not want to participate in that internal war fell under the pressure of the slogan "Whoever is not with us is against us." And they, too, were forced to take up arms in order to fight with the same as them.

If the defeated tried in many ways to recreate the old Russian army with its age-old traditions, then the victors created a new type of army - the Red Workers 'and Peasants' Army, abbreviated as the Red Army. Each of them had its commanders and commanders. If in the white troops they were overwhelmingly former tsarist generals and senior officers, then in the red troops, after going through the crucible of the Civil War, as a rule, former junior officers of the old army and its lower ranks who went through the World War became such.

All the characters in this book belong to the elite leaders of the Red Army. They are different in origin: from the proletarian systems of the city and village, from the Cossacks, many from the nobility. Most of them have behind them military schools, the Academy of the General Staff, schools of wartime ensigns. During the Civil War, they were called military specialists (military specialists) in the ranks of the Red Army. A minority learned the art of commanding in war, but not always at the front. Both Supreme Commanders of the Soviet Republic, I. I. Vatsetis and S. S. Kamenev, were former colonels who successfully graduated from the Military Academy of the General Staff.

Four of them were professional underground revolutionaries - V. A. Antonov-Ovseenko, K. E. Voroshilov, L. D. Trotsky and M. V. Frunze. N. I. Makhno can also be counted among them. All of them at different times served as people's commissar for military (and naval) affairs. Only the first of them had a military education, the rest were taught the art of commanding and fighting by the Civil War.

Part of the Red military leaders were "nuggets" of that war, which the revolutionary elements threw to the commanding heights in the Red Army. These are: S. M. Budyonny, O. I. Gorodovikov, P. E. Dybenko, G. I. Kotovsky and V. I. Chapaev. The rest, not named above, wore officer epaulettes on their shoulders during the World War.

The civil war reached a particular intensity in the Cossack regions, the population of which at its beginning, for the most part, swayed to the side of the White Cause. From the Cossack class, the Don O. I. Gorodovikov and F. K. Mironov, the Orenburger N. D. Kashirin and the Kuban I. L. Sorokin became the military leaders of the Red Cause. The fate of the last three Red Cossacks is tragic.

All the heroes of the book began the Civil War with the command of various detachments, regiments, brigades. But among them were those who immediately or almost immediately soared to the heights of the military power of the Red Cause at the very beginning of the all-Russian "fire". These are: V. A. Antonov-Ovseenko, I. I. Vatsetis, P. E. Dybenko, S. S. Kamenev, L. D. Trotsky, M. N. Tukhachevsky and V. I. Shorin. But their fate in the ranks of the Red Army is connected not only with ups and downs, but also with downfalls. Only one of them, Kamenev, died a natural death.

Half of the heroes of the book, who shone in the ranks of the fighting Red Army and left their personal mark on the history of the Civil War, became victims of the Stalinist repressions of the 30s. Their names are: V. A. Antonov-Ovseenko, V. K. Blucher, I. I. Vatsetis, A. I. Gekker, P. E. Dybenko, A. I. Egorov, N. D. Kashirin, A. I. Kork, M. N. Tukhachevsky, I. P. Uborevich, I. F. Fedko, and V. I. Shorin. It is noteworthy that three of them, recognized red commanders, became the first of five people awarded the title of Marshal of the Soviet Union for military service to the socialist Fatherland: Blucher, Yegorov and Tukhachevsky. Vatsetis was the first Commander-in-Chief of the Republic. For almost two decades, their names remained outside the national history. If they were remembered, then with an unkind word.

One person - S. S. Kamenev, the former second Commander-in-Chief of the Republic, was ranked among the "enemies of the people" after his death, "happily" avoiding execution in the 30s by a court verdict. But even he was for a time “marked out” from Soviet history, from the “faceless” history of the Civil War in Russia.

During the years of the Civil War, such “nuggets” in the galaxy of red military leaders as F. K. Mironov and I. L. Sorokin were killed without trial or investigation in Soviet prisons (in Moscow and Stavropol). Both of them came from the Cossacks, the first from the Don, the second from the Kuban. Neither one nor the other did not get along in the ongoing war with the Moscow authorities. So their life ending for history does not look like something incomprehensible, illogical.

Soon after the end of the Civil War, another red "nugget" was killed by his own - G.I. Kotovsky, also a man with a complex, rebellious character. To this day, there is no consensus on the motives for the murder, and there never will be.

Of all the heroes of the book, only one legendary commander, V. I. Chapaev, died in the fire of the Civil War. He died from a bullet sent by the hand of a white Cossack. But who can say what the fate of this "nugget" of the Red Case would have been if he lived to see the Stalinist repressions? The question is controversial and therefore open.

Was killed in Mexico by an NKVD agent, the former chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic, People's Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs during the Civil War, L. D. Trotsky, a personal enemy of Stalin and therefore became an implacable ideological enemy of the Soviet Union. But the fact that he stood at the pinnacle of the military power of the Red Cause during that war is a fact that is difficult to dispute today.

Before the Great Patriotic War, only three book heroes passed away with their death. These are: S. S. Vostretsov (who could well follow the Far Eastern comrades-in-arms Blucher and Uborevich), M. F. Frunze, whose death after the operation raises many questions, and the non-party hero of the Civil War, who made an alliance with the Soviet government three times "father" N I. Makhno, who died unknown in a Warsaw hospital.

Only three of the personalities of this book survived the “execution” of the 1930s and the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945: S. M. Budyonny, K. E. Voroshilov and O. I. Gorodovikov. All of them came from the ranks of the command staff of the famous 1st Cavalry Army, all of them were personally well known to I.V. Stalin. Budyonny and Voroshilov are among the five generals of the Civil War who became the first Marshals of the Soviet Union. In terms of the number of lifetime laurels, not a single hero of the Civil War can compare with them.

All of them are different, these commanders and commanders of the Red Cause, who gave and are ready to give their lives for the Soviet power, for the power of the working people. But she prepared for most of them death and obscurity for many years, which is beyond dispute. But historical truth sooner or later takes its toll, paying a well-deserved tribute to the true merits of the heroes of this book in the field of the Civil War in Russia. That war, which incinerated not only the country, but also the souls of its people.

Alexey Shishov,
military historian and writer

Antonov-Ovseenko Vladimir Alexandrovich
The path from the storming of the Winter Palace to the post of execution prosecutor of the RSFSR

V. A. Antonov-Ovseenko could rightly be called a man of amazing fate even during his lifetime. A professional revolutionary, party publicist, one of the leaders of the storming of the Winter Palace, People's Commissar for Military Affairs, commander of the Soviet troops in the South of Russia and the Ukrainian Front, diplomat and People's Commissar of Justice of the RSFSR, became a victim of Stalin's repressions of the 30s.

Born in 1883 in the ancient city of Chernigov. His father was an officer with the rank of captain A. A. Ovseenko, who received military awards for the war with the Turks. Vladimir had two brothers and two sisters. At the age of 18 he graduated from the Voronezh Cadet Corps.

In September 1901, at the insistence of his parents, Vladimir Ovseenko entered the Nikolaev Military Engineering School in the capital. But the following month, in October, the cadet, an unbalanced and quick-tempered man, was expelled from the school for refusing to take the oath of allegiance to "the Tsar and the Fatherland." So he protested against the parental "coercion" to become, like his father, a military man. Was first arrested for 11 days.

At the end of the year, once in Warsaw, he becomes a member of the student social democratic circle. In the spring of the following year, 1902, having moved to St. Petersburg, he works in the port of Alexander and as a coachman for the Society for the Protection of Animals.

In the same 1902, Vladimir Ovseenko again entered the military school - Vladimirskoe in St. Petersburg, which trained infantry officers. At the end of the year, he joins the ranks of the RSDLP and creates an underground circle at the school, being close to the Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs), then establishes contact with the Bolshevik organization. Engaged in the distribution of prohibited literature. Then he was not even twenty years old.

He graduated from the military school in the first category, having received the highest score in all subjects, that is, 12 points. This meant: “Knows everything that has been covered very thoroughly, answers firmly, develops ideas clearly, arranging answers in a systematic order, resolves all questions, refutes all objections, expresses accurately, coherently and freely.”

Ovseenko graduated from the school with the rank of second lieutenant and was assigned to the 40th Kolyvan Infantry Regiment stationed in Warsaw. Even before arriving in the regiment, while on vacation, the young officer completed a party task, receiving illegal literature in Vilna and appearances from the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania. He constantly strived for active practical work of an illegal underground worker. For transporting a cargo of illegal literature, he was arrested for 10 days.

In Warsaw, Vladimir Ovseenko and his young wife Anna Mikhailovna, a graduate of the Bestuzhev Courses, became activists in a local underground organization. The lieutenant participates in an unsuccessful attempt to release the famous Polish Social Democrat S. Kaspshak, who was sentenced to death, succeeds in publishing the underground "Soldier's List". During the revolutionary events of early 1905, he was included in the list of "unreliable" soldiers and officers of the Warsaw garrison.

In March 1905, Lieutenant Vladimir Ovseenko was assigned to the active army in Manchuria. But he did not get into the Japanese War, leaving military service and becoming an underground worker, that is, a professional revolutionary, which became his life's work. For a short time he emigrates to Austria.

In the same year, he participated in an unsuccessful attempt to raise an uprising of soldiers of two infantry regiments in the Warsaw suburb of Pulawy - the 71st Belevsky and the 72nd Tula and an artillery brigade. In those events, a second lieutenant who deserted from the army wounded a company sergeant major with a shot from a revolver and managed to escape. Ovseenko has the first underground nickname "Bayonet".

He has to leave Poland for St. Petersburg. The Metropolitan Committee of the RSDLP sends him for underground work in the sea fortress of Kronstadt, having documents for the Austrian citizen Stefan Dolnitsko. There he organizes illegal gatherings of soldiers and sailors. He was arrested, served his sentence in Kronstadt and was released at the end of the same 1905 under an amnesty.

In the same 1905, he participated in an attempt to organize an uprising in the garrison of St. Petersburg (railway battalion and sappers). Antonov-Avseenko on the pages of the "Red Fleet" (1924) spoke about that event as follows:

“... I, as a former officer, must take command. The start is early in the morning.

The night has passed. No one came, as agreed, for me. After I found out - the soldiers refused to speak.

Until October, Antonov-Ovseenko worked in various underground (military) organizations of the united RSDLP, adjoining the Mensheviks. He announced his joining the Bolshevik Party at the end of May 1917. In March 1906, he escaped from the Suschevsky arrest house. In May of the following year, the visiting session of the Odessa Military District Court sentenced him to death as Anton Kabanov. The execution was replaced by 20 years hard labor. A month later, he escaped from the Sevastopol prison. In 1909 he spent 6 months in prison as Anton Hooke, after which he emigrated to France.

There, in Paris, Vladimir Alexandrovich received the party pseudonym Antonov, and subsequently began to be written Antonov-Ovseenko. Under this double surname, he entered the history of the Civil War in Russia, as well as the history of the Stalinist repressions of the 30s.

In May 1917 he returned to Russia. In Helsingfors, he edited the newspaper "Priboy". He was elected to the Constituent Assembly from the Northern Front on the list of the RSDLP (b). Conducted party work in Finland and among the sailors of the Baltic Fleet. In mid-October, he became secretary of the Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee (VRK).

Antonov-Ovseenko entered the history of the October Revolution as one of the leaders of the storming of the Winter Palace and the leader of the arrest of the Provisional Government. On behalf of the Military Revolutionary Committee, he was in charge of the distribution of detachments of Baltic sailors to key points in the city on the Neva and led the "field headquarters" to capture the Winter Palace. Signed an ultimatum addressed to the Commander-in-Chief of the Petrograd Military District, who, in the realities of October, commanded few people.

On the night of October 25-26 (November 7-8, New Style), the Winter Palace was stormed by revolutionary detachments. As a matter of fact, there was no one to defend the Provisional Government, and the Socialist Prime Minister A.F. Kerensky managed to escape from the capital in time. V. A. Antonov-Ovseenko himself recalled the arrest of the Provisional Government as follows:

“... The ministers froze at the table, merging into one quivering pale spot.

- In the name of the Military Revolutionary Committee, I declare you under arrest.

- What is there! Finish them!.. Bay!

- To order! The Military Revolutionary Committee is in charge here!”

The American journalist A. R. Williams witnessed the historic storming of the Winter Palace and the events that followed it in red Petrograd. About Antonov-Ovseenko he wrote:

“I remember Antonov’s pale ascetic face, thick, blond hair under a picturesque wide-browed hat, a calm, concentrated look that makes one forget his purely civilian appearance ...

One sailor told me that even upstairs, after Chudnovsky compiled a list of those arrested, Antonov asked: “Comrades, do we have cars?” Someone answered: "No." And others shouted: “Nothing, they will walk on foot! Enough, train!” Antonov asked for silence, thought for a while and said: “All right, we will take them to the (Peter and Paul) fortress on foot.”

At about 4 o'clock in the morning, Antonov-Ovseenko ordered the arrested "temporary" ministers to be taken to the casemates of the Trubetskoy bastion of Petropavlovka. Saying goodbye to the already appointed commissar of the fortress, the "liquidator" of the Provisional Government said:

- I'm going to Smolny with a report ...

At the Smolny Institute, Vladimir Aleksandrovich delivered a standing ovation to the delegates of the 2nd All-Russian Congress of Soviets. On October 27, Antonov-Ovseenko was elected to the Central Executive Committee of Soviets (CEC) and entered the first composition of the Provisional Workers' and Peasants' Government - the Council of People's Commissars (Sovnarkom).

The Soviet government, elected by the 2nd All-Russian Congress of Soviets, included the Committee for Military and Naval Affairs (renamed the Council of People's Commissars for Military and Naval Affairs), which consisted of three people's commissars: V. A. Antonov-Ovseenko, Ensign N. V Krylenko and Chairman of the Central Balt P. E. Dybenko. In the course of the formation of the Council of People's Commissars, V. I. Lenin distributed duties between them as follows: "Dybenko - the naval ministry, Krylenko - the external front, Antonov - the military ministry and the internal front." The "internal front" was understood as the struggle against the counter-revolution that was raising its head.

The next day, October 28, Antonov-Ovseenko was appointed assistant commander of the Petrograd Military District. This was one of the many cases when he, a former lieutenant, came in handy with the knowledge gained at the Vladimir Military School.

On November 7, he was appointed commander of the defense of Petrograd and the troops of the Petrograd Military District. The revolution had to be defended: the 3rd cavalry corps of General P. N. Krasnov and the socialist minister A. F. Kerensky went to the red Peter. In the capital itself, the junkers of military schools could revolt. The "front" line, which Antonov-Ovseenko took care of, passed along the Pulkovo Heights.

Both the people's commissar for military affairs and the commander of the 3rd cavalry corps turned out to be one of the main characters in the October events of 1917. Krasnov complied with the order of the head of the already former Provisional Government, who had fled from the capital to front-line Pskov, to march on "rebellious" Petrograd. An attempt to take a million-strong city with a rebellious garrison of 300 thousand people by several thousand horsemen looked completely unrealistic. But in Smolny, such a campaign of the class enemy was taken more than seriously.

Moreover, only about nine incomplete hundreds of the 1st Don (9th and 10th Don Cossack regiments) and Ussuri Cossack divisions with 18 horse guns, one armored car and one armored train approached Petrograd. With these forces (they can even be called symbolic - only 700 Cossacks), Major General Krasnov launched an offensive against red Petrograd near the village of Pulkovo. That is, he embarked on an outright adventure.

Krasnov's troops were defeated in a battle for many hours on October 30 at the Pulkovo Heights by thousands of detachments of St. Petersburg Red Guards and revolutionary Baltic sailors. They were commanded by the Left SR Lieutenant Colonel M. A. Muravyov. There is no need to talk about the equality of the forces of the parties in terms of the number of people, guns, machine guns and other things.

Before that, about 30 thousand mobilized people sent from the capital to dig trenches, in a matter of days created the defensive line "Zaliv - Neva". However, he turned out to be unclaimed in those events. In addition, the Krasnov Cossacks were not eager to fight for the "temporary" ministers and their head, Kerensky, and did not persist in battle.

This is how the term appeared in Russian (Soviet) history: the counter-revolutionary rebellion of Kerensky-Krasnov in October 1917. Historians argue about its essence today. First of all, there is a discussion about whether these events were a "mutiny", since the order for the 3rd Cavalry Corps was given by the head of the Russian government.

The battle at the Pulkovo Heights ended with negotiations in Krasnoye Selo with a delegation of revolutionary Baltic sailors. They ended with the consent of the Cossacks to go home with horses and weapons. Both sides were satisfied with this outcome of the armed confrontation near the capital. The corps commander was invited to negotiations, arrested and taken to Petrograd, to Smolny. After interrogation, he was released on the word of honor of a Russian officer not to speak out against the Soviet regime anymore. P. N. Krasnov escaped from house arrest, using documents from the Don Cossack Committee.

The head of the Provisional Government, the socialist A.F. Kerensky, warned by Krasnov, also successfully fled from red Petrograd from Gatchina. He had to change into a leather driver's suit and cover half his face with motorcycle goggles. In the White movement in the South of Russia, he was not accepted, and soon ended up overseas, in the USA, where he ended his life. It seems that Antonov-Ovseenko, who "liquidated" the government of the "provisional", was often mentioned by Kerensky.

The People's Commissar himself at the Pulkovo Heights, who were defended by the revolutionary detachments of Baltic sailors, Petrograd Red Guards and soldiers of the capital's garrison, gathered by him from the "counter-revolutionary Cossacks", was not there for a good "good" reason. During the speech of the junkers in the capital, he was accidentally arrested by them and spent the night at the telephone exchange of the capital captured by the rebels. The junkers exchanged Antonov-Ovseenko for a promise to save their lives, which was accepted by the Soviet side.

Returning to Smolny, Vladimir Alexandrovich got acquainted with the cases of suppressing the Junker rebellion. Most attentively, he read the report that the cadets of the Vladimir Military School, from which he graduated with the rank of second lieutenant thirteen years ago, held on most stubbornly and for the longest time.

On November 23, Antonov-Ovseenko became a member of the collegium of the People's Commissariat for Military Affairs (simultaneously with N. I. Podvoisky and N. V. Krylenko, whom he was well acquainted with in October).

Vladimir Alexandrovich turned out to be those military leaders of the newly established Soviet power, who were given the reins of government to suppress the emerging counter-revolution. On December 8, he was appointed commander of all Red forces in the South of Russia. He was entrusted with the overall leadership of "operations against the Kalinin troops and their accomplices."

There was no Red Army then, and the Red Guard detachments were not a big force. The decree on the reduction of the old Russian army (it had actually collapsed) at the front and in the rear had already been signed by Lenin, Krylenko and Antonov-Ovseenko.

Appointed to lead operations against the troops of the Don military ataman A. M. Kaledin and the Ukrainian Rada, V. A. Antonov-Ovseenko left Petrograd on the same day, December 8, 1917, and on the 10th arrived in Kharkov with a mandate from the Council of People's Commissars, which read:

“This certificate has been given to Comrade Antonov that, with the consent of Commander-in-Chief Krylenko, Commissar Podvoisky and the entire collegium for military affairs, he is authorized to lead operations against the Kaledin troops and their accomplices.

Previous Owls. Nar. Com. V. Ulyanov (Lenin)."

On December 10, at the Mogilev Headquarters of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, which still existed, the so-called Revolutionary Field Headquarters (RPS) was created. He was directly subordinate to V. A. Antonov-Ovseenko, carrying out his orders to concentrate forces gathered against Ataman Kaledin.

Once in Kharkov and having dealt with the situation in the South of Russia, where the first centers of the Civil War had already broken out on the Cossack Don, Antonov-Ovseenko drew up a plan to combat the southern counter-revolution. This plan was communicated to V. I. Lenin for discussion at a meeting of the Council of People's Commissars. What did the people's commissar of the Committee for Military and Naval Affairs of the Council of People's Commissars, who was in charge of the "war ministry and the internal front" offer:

“The plan was this - a defensive line from the side of Poltava (the troops of the Rada were moving there. - A.Sh.), the capture of the junction stations Lozovaya, Sinelnikovo (connection with Yekaterinoslav), which ensures that hostile trains from the west are not transported and the way to the Donets Basin (from Lozovaya - bypassing the unreliable route through Balakleya). Capture of Kupyansk, movement from Kharkov and Belgorod; an immediate start to arm the workers of the basin, the Donetsk region, etc. After the concentration of some forces in the Donets basin - the displacement of the Cossack gangs, prowling 100 versts south of Nikitovka, and moving several ways to the east against Kaledin, simultaneously with the offensive to the east - a headstrike from Voronezh (the main forces of Kaledin are located along the Voronezh-Rostov railway), from the east - from Tsaritsyn ... and from the south - from the Caucasus ... "

The Antonov-Ovseenko plan was connected with the realities of what was happening. The “Kaledin counter-revolutionary nest” – the capital of the Don Cossack army, the city of Novocherkassk, was taken into the ring and destroyed. Mastering the junction stations on the railway line on the Southern Railway (Kharkov - Simferopol) made it possible to control the military echelons that went from the collapsed Russian front into the depths of Russia, and above all the echelons with Cossack troops - regiments, individual hundreds, artillery batteries.

Antonov-Ovseenko named forces that could be relied upon in the fight against Ataman Kaledin. These were the detachment of the former ensign R.F. Sievers, the “significant detachment” of Black Sea sailors from Sevastopol, the Moscow detachment of the Red Guard (200 people), the revolutionary reserve infantry regiment in Belgorod, the workers of the Donbass, who still had to be organized and armed.

This plan already in January 1918 underwent significant changes. Attacks on Novocherkassk from the side of Tsaritsyn and the Caucasus had to be "set aside", and the Kaledinsky Don had to be attacked only from the side of the Donetsk coal basin. But Antonov-Ovseenko had already gathered more forces for this operation - a large detachment of Yu. V. Sablin from Moscow, Soviet detachments from the front-line Don Cossacks, an infantry regiment from Finland, a detachment of Petrov. The arrival of Latvian riflemen was expected.

Among these troops of the Soviet government was the red "Cossack Ukrainian regiment in Kharkov." It was the 1st Regiment of the Red Cossacks, formed on the basis of the disarmed 2nd Reserve Ukrainian Regiment of the “Petliurist orientation”. The regiment was formed and commanded by a member of the CEC of Ukraine V. M. Primakov, a hero of the Civil War and a victim of Stalinist repressions of the 30s.

Later, V. A. Antonov-Ovseenko in his “Notes on the Civil War” noted: “The main blow could only come from the Donbass, since only from here could it be properly prepared.” No real help could be expected from the Tsaritsyno Defense Headquarters, headed by S.K. Minin. The 39th Infantry Division, which arbitrarily left the Caucasian front, “settled down to feed” in the villages and villages of the Kuban and Stavropol Territory and soon found itself in the fire of Cossack uprisings.

In Kharkov, the People's Commissar without delay set up the headquarters of the Southern Front. The Left Socialist-Revolutionary, Lieutenant Colonel Muravyov, was appointed his chief, with whom Vladimir Aleksandrovich worked together in Petrograd when the "mutiny" of the 3rd cavalry corps of General Krasnov was suppressed.

Antonov-Ovseenko really had a high professional military training. Memoirist M. Z. Levinson writes that when at the end of December a combined detachment of Putilov workers and soldiers of the 176th Regiment arrived in Kharkov under his command, the commander and assistant N. P. Eremeev appeared in Antonov-Ovseenko’s carriage. They saw a man with glasses, long hair, who looked like a musician or a teacher. By the end of the conversation, having received a combat mission, they were convinced that they were dealing with a person who knew military affairs very well.

The People's Commissar, gathering the forces of the Red Guard in Kharkov, demonstrated assertiveness and organizational talent. So it was in the formation of the Southern Revolutionary Armored Division here, which became the first such unit in the Red Army. It was created, as they say, from the world by thread and in a variety of ways. Consisted of six departments of 4-5 armored cars each. In early January, the command of these Red armored forces was entrusted to A.I. Selyavkin.

In Kharkov itself, Ensign Sievers with his detachment, reinforced by artillery, attacked the barracks of the 19th Armored Division, which supported the Central Rada. It was disarmed, and 4 armored cars became the main trophies of the Reds.

10 armored vehicles were delivered by the Baltic sailor Khovrin, who, with his detachment, on the way from Petrograd to the South in the city of Kursk, disarmed the reserve armored division of the British military mission.

An armored detachment of the Kharkov military commandant's office was mobilized to fight the Kaledin White Cossacks. It consisted of 5 heavy vehicles of the English company "Persorats", armed with cannons.

In addition, V. A. Antonov-Ovseenko himself, who arrived in Kharkov with detachments of the Red Guards, brought with him 12 Austin armored cars from Petrograd.

Antonov-Ovseenko had to lead not only military operations against the Whites on the Don, but also the fight against sabotage in areas where power was in the hands of the Soviets. On January 10, 1918, the commandant of the Aleksandrovsk station (now the city of Zaporozhye, Ukraine) Kuznetsov telegraphed the People's Commissar to Kharkov:

“All postal and telephone employees, as well as other local governments, went on strike.”

Two hours later, the following order from V.A. Antonov-Ovseenko was sent from there to Aleksandrovsk, which demanded:

“I declare the city under martial law. The senior officials of the post office, telephone and others should be arrested and taken to Kharkov. The rest are invited to come to work within 24 hours, those who did not appear should be arrested according to the list and sent under escort to Yuzovka, Makeevka for forced labor to clean up the mines. Publicize this order widely.

The attack on the White South began with three columns - the former ensign of the Bolshevik R.F. Sievers, the former ensign of the Left SR Yu.V. Sablin (soon one of the leaders of the Left SR rebellion in Moscow) and the former colonel, then the Left SR A. Egorova. At the end of December, the Sievers column took Ilovaiskoye, Sablin reached Lugansk and Rodakov, Yegorov occupied Yekaterinoslav.

17.5 thousand Red Guards, revolutionary sailors and soldiers under the command of R. F. Sievers, Yu. V. Sablin and G. K. Petrov attacked directly against the forces of Ataman Kaledin. At their disposal, they had 48 artillery pieces, 4 armored trains, 4 armored cars and 40 machine guns at the front line.

Simultaneously with the offensive on the White Cossack Don, the Red troops were advancing towards Kyiv, which was in the hands of the Central Rada. Kyiv was liberated largely due to the uprising of the workers of the Arsenal plant. Antonov-Ovseenko's former assistant, G.I. Chudnovsky, was released from prison and appointed by him the first commandant of the Winter Palace. Now, sentenced to death by the Rada, he became the first commandant of Soviet Kyiv, to which the CEC of Ukraine moved from Kharkov.

The red columns advanced with battles. At the end of January, Antonov-Ovseenko reported to Moscow on the successes achieved: "The stations of Likhaya, Zverevo, Sulin, on the way north of Novocherkassk, are occupied by victorious revolutionary troops."

Ataman A. M. Kaledin failed to raise the Don to fight the Soviet regime, and he shot himself. The Don army "swings" to the side of the White Cause later, but not at the beginning of 1918: the Cossacks were tired of the war and had not yet experienced the Red Terror. In February, the Red troops occupy the cities of Rostov and Novocherkassk, the capital of the Don region. The remnants of the White Cossacks went to the Salsky steppes, and the Kornilov Volunteer Army went on their first Kuban ("Ice") campaign.

The blow to the white Don was impressive. The well-known Soviet historian of the Civil War, N. E. Kakurin, attributed to the advantages of a strategic solution to this difficult task “the flexibility of its decisions depending on the situation”, “the desire to concentrate as many forces as possible on the directions chosen for delivering the main blows”.

The civil war became a terrible test for Russia. This page of history, which has been glorified for many decades, was in fact shameful. Fratricide, numerous betrayals, robberies and violence coexisted in it with exploits and self-sacrifice. The white army consisted of different people - people from all classes, representatives of various nationalities who inhabited a vast country and had different education. The Red troops were also not a homogeneous mass. Both opposing sides experienced largely similar difficulties. In the end, after four years, the Reds won. Why?

When did the Civil War start

When it comes to the beginning of the Civil War, historians give different dates. For example, Krasnov put forward units subordinate to him in order to take control of Petrograd on October 25, 1917. Or another fact: General Alekseev arrived in the Don to organize the Volunteer Army - this happened on November 2. And here is also the Declaration of Milyukov, published in the newspaper Donskaya Rech for December 27th. Why is there no reason to consider it an official declaration of war In a sense, these three versions, like many others, are true. In the last two months of 1917, the Volunteer White Army was formed (and this could not happen all at once). In the Civil War, she became the only serious force capable of resisting the Bolsheviks.

Personnel and social profile of the White Army

The backbone of the white movement was the Russian officers. Beginning in 1862, its social class structure underwent changes, but these processes reached a particular impetus during the First World War. If in the middle of the 19th century, belonging to the highest military leadership was the lot of the aristocracy, then at the beginning of the next century, commoners began to be increasingly admitted into it. The famous commanders of the White Army can serve as an example. Alekseev is the son of a soldier, Kornilov's father was a cornet of the Cossack army, and Denikin was a serf. Contrary to the propaganda stereotypes that were introduced into the mass consciousness, there could be no talk of some kind of “white bone”. The officers of the White Army, by their origin, could represent a social cross-section of the entire Russian Empire. Infantry schools for the period from 1916 to 1917 released 60% of people from peasant families. In Golovin, out of a thousand warrant officers (junior lieutenants, according to the Soviet system of military ranks), there were 700 of them. In addition to them, 260 officers came from the bourgeois, working and merchant environment. There were also nobles - four dozen.

The White Army was founded and shaped by the notorious "cook's children". Only five percent of the organizers of the movement were wealthy and eminent people, the income of the rest before the revolution consisted only of officer salaries.

Modest debut

The officers intervened in the course of political events immediately after It was an organized military force, the main advantage of which was discipline and combat skills. The officers, as a rule, did not have political convictions in the sense of belonging to a particular party, but they had a desire to restore order in the country and avoid the collapse of the state. As for the number, the entire White army, as of January 1918 (the campaign of General Kaledin against Petrograd), consisted of seven hundred Cossacks. The demoralization of the troops led to an almost complete reluctance to fight. Not only ordinary soldiers, but also officers were extremely reluctant (about 1% of the total) to obey orders for mobilization.

By the beginning of full-scale hostilities, the White Volunteer Army numbered up to seven thousand soldiers and Cossacks, commanded by a thousand officers. She did not have any stocks of food and weapons, as well as support from the population. It seemed that the imminent collapse was inevitable.

Siberia

After the seizure of power by the Reds in Tomsk, Irkutsk and other Siberian cities, underground anti-Bolshevik centers created by officers began to operate. corps was the signal for their open action against the Soviet regime in May-June 1918. The West Siberian Army was created (commander - General A.N. Grishin-Almazov), in which volunteers began to enroll. Soon its number exceeded 23 thousand. By August, the White army, having united with the troops of Yesaul G. M. Semenov, formed into two corps (4th East Siberian and 5th Amur) and controlled a vast territory from the Urals to Baikal. It numbered about 60 thousand bayonets, 114 thousand unarmed volunteers under the command of almost 11 thousand officers.

North

The White Army in the Civil War, in addition to Siberia and the Far East, fought on three more main fronts: Southern, Northwestern and Northern. Each of them had its own specifics both in terms of the operational situation and in terms of the contingent. The most professionally trained officers who went through the German war concentrated on the northern theater of operations. In addition, they were distinguished by excellent education, upbringing and courage. Many commanders of the White Army came from Ukraine and owed their salvation from the Bolshevik terror to the German troops, which explained their Germanophilia, others had traditional sympathies for the Entente. This situation has sometimes led to conflicts. The northern white army was relatively small.

Northwestern White Army

It was formed with the support of the German armed forces in opposition to the Bolshevik Red Army. After the departure of the Germans, its composition consisted of up to 7000 bayonets. It was the least prepared White Guard front, which, however, was accompanied by temporary success. The sailors of the Chudskaya flotilla, together with the cavalry detachment of Balakhovich and Permykin, having become disillusioned with the communist idea, decided to go over to the side of the White Guards. Volunteers-peasants also joined the growing army, and then high school students were forcibly mobilized. The Northwestern Army fought with varying success and became one of the examples of the curiosity of the entire war. Numbering 17 thousand fighters, it was controlled by 34 generals and many colonels, among whom were those who were not even twenty years old.

South of Russia

Events on this front were decisive in the fate of the country. A population of over 35 million, a territory equal in area to a couple of large European countries, equipped with a developed transport infrastructure (seaports, railways) was controlled by Denikin's white forces. The south of Russia could exist separately from the rest of the territory of the former Russian Empire: it had everything for autonomous development, including agriculture and industry. The generals of the White Army, who received an excellent military education and many-sided experience in combat operations with Austria-Hungary and Germany, had every chance of winning victories over the often poorly educated enemy commanders. However, the problems were still the same. People did not want to fight, and it was not possible to create a single ideological platform. Monarchists, democrats, liberals were united only by the desire to resist Bolshevism.

Deserters

Both the Red and the White armies suffered from the same disease: representatives of the peasantry did not want to voluntarily join them. Forced mobilization led to a decrease in overall combat capability. Russian officers, regardless of traditionally constituted a special caste, far from the soldier masses, which caused internal contradictions. The scale of punitive measures applied to deserters was monstrous on both sides of the front, but the Bolsheviks practiced executions more often and more decisively, including showing cruelty towards the families of those who had fled. In addition, they were bolder in their promises. As the number of conscripted soldiers grew, "eroding" combat-ready officer regiments, it became difficult to control the performance of combat missions. There were practically no reserves, the supply was deteriorating. There were other problems that led to the defeat of the army in the South, which was the last stronghold of the whites.

Myths and reality

The image of a White Guard officer, dressed in an impeccable tunic, certainly a nobleman with a sonorous surname, spending his leisure time drinking and singing romances, is far from the truth. We had to fight in conditions of a constant shortage of weapons, ammunition, food, uniforms and everything else, without which it is difficult, if not impossible, to maintain an army in a combat-ready state. The Entente provided support, but this assistance was not enough, plus there was also a moral crisis, expressed in a sense of struggle with one's own people.

After the defeat in the Civil War, Wrangel and Denikin found salvation abroad. In 1920, the Bolsheviks shot Alexander Vasilyevich Kolchak. The army (White) with each bloody year lost more and more new territories. All this led to the forced evacuation from Sevastopol in 1922 of the surviving units of the once powerful army. A little later, the last pockets of resistance in the Far East were suppressed.

Many songs of the White Army, after a certain alteration of the texts, became Red Guards. The words “for Holy Russia” were replaced by the phrase “for the power of the Soviets”, a similar fate awaited other wonderful new names (“Through the valleys and along the hills”, “Kakhovka”, etc.) Today, after decades of oblivion, they are available to listeners who are interested in history of the White movement.

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