For the better part of six months, the fighting in the Donbas and Don regions of southern Russia and southeastern Ukraine had been a slowly turning meatgrinder of White Russians, Red Bolsheviks, Cossacks and Ukrainians of all political stripes.  Despite being the main front of the Armed Forces of South Russia (AFSR) with the Volunteer Army that had risen from the first days of Bolshevik rule, the Whites had been consistently outgunned and outmanned.  The Volunteer Army had at best 26,000-35,000 men, but were led by experienced Tsarist-era officers, including their commanding officer, General Anton Denikin.  The Bolshevik forces in the area numbered perhaps two-to-one to their White counterparts, but were generally less knowledgeable in military tactics and distracted by their role in invading and occupying the crumbling Ukrainian People’s Republic.  Both sides were increasingly mistrusted by an weary populace that had gone through five years of epic bloodshed and deprivation.

In mid-May of 1919, the tide however looked to turn.  Soldiers of the Volunteer Army and the “Don Army”, essentially Cossack shock troops, had won a number of victories but the Bolsheviks had always seemingly managed to regroup and counterattack.  Yet the Ukrainian front for the Reds had stalled, with the Ukrainians even able to regain some key territory, meaning fresh Bolshevik troops were being deployed elsewhere.  When the White Cossack cavalry attacked this time, the four Russian armies in the region collapsed, with the 9th Army in particular being cut in two and destroyed.  The path to central Ukraine and Russia now lay open.

On July 3rd, 1919, The White Russian movement was at it’s zenith and the Bolsheviks appeared to be at their military nadir.  Victorious across most of his front, General Denikin issued Directive No. 08878 to his armies – an attack on Moscow itself.  The goal was nothing less than the end of the Russian Civil War.

---

The political consolidation of the White Russian movement in the winter of 1918/1919 had done nothing to immediately impact the war on the ground.  The Siberian All-Russian Provisional Government of Admiral Alexander Kolchak remained massively removed from the southern Russian/Caucasus forces of the AFSR, but was nevertheless a small light of hope for any anti-Bolshevik forces at an otherwise dark stage in the Russian Civil War.  The Soviets had invaded almost all of their neighboring countries and were victorious on all fronts, including expanding out from their holdings in central Russia and clawing back gains from the small, disorganized White forces.  By the start of 1919, the Soviets looked as though they might reunify the Tsarist-era lands of the Russian Empire relatively quickly and expand their influence throughout Europe as Germany and then Hungary both experienced communist revolutions. 

Yet as hopeless as the White and anti-Bolshevik situation appeared at the start of 1919, by spring the various Soviet offensives had stalled and in some cases, were even being reversed.  The Baltic countries had begun to semi-unite to oppose the Russian occupations of their new republics, assisted by units of the newly formed Polish Army and the quasi-paramilitary Freikorps of Germany.  The introduction of the Poles in particular provided an experienced veteran core of soldiers led by Józef Piłsudski, who we last saw trying to organize a military force for the short-lived Germany puppet Kingdom of Poland.  The Polish invasion into Soviet-held Lithuanian territory in March of 1919 provided a key turning point in the overall war.  By May, the entire Baltic front looked completely different – the Lithuanians had pushed back the Soviets in some areas, the Latvians had retaken their capital of Riga, and the Estonians had turned back the invasion to the point of now occupying Russian territory.     

The White movement was gaining ground as well, and beginning to threaten the core Soviet-held provinces.  Kolchak’s Siberian Army emerged from the Urals to strike both north, in hopes of reaching the Allied-held North Russia Front and potentially St. Petersburg/Petrograd, and south, to place pressure on the center of the Bolshevik line.  At near numerical parity with the Red Army in the region, the Whites gained considerable ground, almost causing the Bolshevik line to completely break.  The Whites had gained political control of some of the Baltic resistance as well, with the talented former Tsarist General Nikolai Yudenich, who had been responsible for most of the Russian victories in the Caucasus against the Turks, now leading the Estonian armies in an attempt to seize St. Petersburg/Petrograd.  Coupled with General Denikin’s progress in the Donbas, within less than six months the White Russians had gone from looking defeated to the verge of striking a serious blow to Bolshevism.  

It helped that the Bolsheviks’ greatest opponent were themselves.  After nearly a year-and-a-half of dictatorial rule, any veneer of leftist principles and self-determination had been more than worn away with arrests, executions and starvation.  While there had been leftist political opposition to the Bolsheviks from the very beginning, including Social Revolutionary (SR) inspired small uprisings throughout 1918, now even ordinary Russian citizens were starting to rebel.  In the spring of 1919, as the Soviets increased their forced requisitions of grain in the Volga, farmers organized and protested to the local Bolshevik authorities.  The Bolsheviks responded by sending in soldiers, who promptly revolted in support of the farmers, shooting their own officers.  The resulting “Chapan rebellion”, named for the sheepskin winter robe worn by the rebelling peasants, may have only lasted a month, but attracted up to 150,000 farmers and soldiers and had to be brutally put down by the Bolsheviks.  Entire villages were burned to the ground, with survivors either executed immediately or led off to prison camps that essentially worked the inhabitants to death.  It had been the first major popular uprising against the Reds and was largely non-political in it’s outlook (the Bolsheviks claimed it had been started by the Whites, although there’s no evidence for the claim).

On the surface, the White Russians held a wide coalition of international support, aided by popular discontent with the Communists, and mixed with military momentum by the summer of 1919.  Denikin and Kolchak’s forces even looked like they could link together in June, as Denikin’s men, assisted by British troops and tanks, seized the key Volga city of Tsaritsyn (the future Stalingrad) from Josef Stalin, who appeared more concerned about eliminating fellow Bolshevik commanders who could challenge his authority than defeating his White opponents.  But even as Denikin confidently announced the White army’s intentions to march towards the revolutionary capital of Moscow on July 3rd, 1919, the fissures that would eventually crack apart the White resistance were plain to see.

---

As the White Russians began to advance deeper into Soviet-controlled territory in the spring/summer of 1919, their largest supporters were (mostly) headed out of the country.

The original Allied landings in Russia during 1918 had been to secure stores of arms that the Allies had first sent to the Tsarist and then Provisional Government forces fighting against the Germans.  Anxious to prevent vast quantities of weaponry from falling into German or Bolshevik hands, the Allies had somewhat unwittingly stumbled into Russia’s civil war, clashing with localized Red forces and sometimes propping up White warlords and commanders.  Over 250,000 various Allied troops would serve in Russia, but roughly half that number were either Japanese or Romanian, as both countries sought to seize Russian territories for themselves and had no interest in aiding any larger White Russian cause as it would be likely self-defeating since the White Russians, just like the Bolsheviks, wished to reunite the Tsarist-era Empire by force.  Those Allied forces that did directly support the Whites found themselves increasingly pulled into a conflict without clear goals.  The British occupation of the northern Russian ports like Murmansk and Arkhangelsk would underscore the constantly shifting alliances and directions of the war.  Invited by the Bolsheviks to occupy the ports as protection against the Germans, the British had then encouraged White-backed military coups, whose soldiers often defected to become Bolsheviks, who sometimes then defected back to the Whites.  The Allies own troops were increasingly unwilling to fight, leading to fears of widespread mutiny.  With war weary populaces at home eager to fully demobilize, the Allies had already announced by mid 1919 their intentions to withdraw, even while the Whites made linking up with these forces a key objective of their spring and summer offensives.

The Whites near total lack of organization or diplomacy didn’t help matters.  Despite his title as the “Supreme Ruler” of Russia, Admiral Alexander Kolchak could barely control his own Siberian home-base, let alone the rest of the White forces.  There was no “White economic programme” and barely even White currency, other than the use of the pre-war Ruble that had lost almost it’s entire value and was no longer backed by any gold standard.  While civilians had revolted against the Bolsheviks for their seizure of food stuffs and forced conscription, the Whites were guilty of the same acts without even the window dressing of democratic representation the Bolsheviks attempted to still project.  In many cases, the Whites were little more than autonomous warlords seeking fiefdoms in a lawless Russian countryside.  White brutality to civilians could often be as bad as the Bolsheviks, and the anti-semitic tone of much of the White propaganda further alienated international support, with Winston Churchill imploring the White leadership to stop their often anti-Jewish tracts and violence.

To compound matters, the Whites couldn’t even effectively ally themselves with the various independent nations of eastern Europe, despite many White leaders at the helm of those countries military forces.  The Whites refused to recognize the independence of Ukraine, Poland, Finland or the Baltics, seeking their reincorporation back into a White-led Russian Empire.  For these nations, the Whites were, at best, a means to an end, distracting the invading Bolsheviks while they fought their own wars of liberation.  Once it had become clear that the White objective of overthrowing the Bolsheviks was an impediment to reaching a separate peace with Moscow, White generals like Nikolai Yudenich were cast out or imprisoned.

Simply put, the Whites lacked anything approaching popular support.  It had been easy to back the White movement when it encompassed an endless spectrum of political views who could be unified under the singular belief that any government was better than the one imposed by the Bolsheviks.  But now that the Whites had driven out any political allies and looked to be gaining the upper hand in the war, the flight of leftist support back to the Bolsheviks was unstoppable.  The Bolsheviks were more than a little leery of letting the Social Revolutionaries and others back into the government, but if the move helped consolidate military power back with the Reds and gave them a fig leaf of coalition politics to cover over their monstrous, repressive regime, it was a trade-off the Bolsheviks were willing to make…for now.

---

Denikin’s White Army struck out north and east from Tsaritsyn following his July 3rd decree, winning further victories against larger, but depleted Soviet forces.  Yet Soviet reinforcements continued to arrive, slowing the White advance to a crawl by the end of the summer.  Frustrated with the lack of success, Denikin reoriented the entire offensive to press west, into Ukraine with the goal of taking Kiev, as it was clear that Soviet forces there were at their weakest.  By the end of August 1919, the Whites had accomplished their new objective, seizing Kiev, Odessa and freeing much of Ukraine from Bolshevik occupation.  It was a victory that would defeat the Whites.

Denikin had ordered his western offensive to proceed regardless of the situation of other fronts.  This left the northern and eastern fronts under his command significantly undermanned.  The initial result didn’t seem to affect the White’s offensive.  In August, as the Bolsheviks were being driven out of much of Ukraine, the Reds threw themselves at the White line to yet another series of defeats.  By now, both sides were dangerously overextended, yet only the Bolsheviks seemed aware of how precarious their situation could be.  In late September, as the Whites advanced closer to Moscow, the Bolsheviks began to make plans to abandon the city, going so far as to form underground resistance movements intended to conduct a guerrilla war in the capital after it was occupied.  In desperation to free up forces, the Bolsheviks signed temporary armistices with the Ukrainians and the Poles, allowing them to move soldiers to the now all-critical Moscow front.  

It was a move the Whites couldn’t replicate.  While Ukraine and Poland would formally join forces the next year to counter renewed Soviet advances, Denikin stubbornly continued his refusal to acknowledge either nation as independent, and as such his White troops were increasingly viewed as occupiers, not saviors from the “Red Menace.”  Leftist peasant rebellions in Ukraine arose, much as the “Chapan rebellion” in Soviet territory.  The “Black Army” of Ukraine espoused anarchist talking points, proclaiming a desire for a “Free Territory” without borders or government, but it’s base of support were average Ukrainian farmers who, like the Chapan rebels before them, simply had had enough of the various warring powers that had ransacked the countryside.  While the Bolsheviks were consolidating their forces, the White were becoming increasingly dissipated.

With a three-to-one advantage in manpower, the Bolsheviks struck back in October 1919.  The roughly 22,000 man White Russian force consisted of the best of the White armies – the Volunteer Army – but their troops were exhausted, undersupplied and overstretched across the front.  Despite the Volunteer Army being essentially the elite core of the White Army, the unit was nearly destroyed in a month-plus of brutal combat.  The Bolsheviks retook a series of towns and the Whites were now forced to retreat.  Few could have known at the time, but the decisive battle of the Russian Civil War had taken place.  

---

The Russian Civil War would still have years to go before the last of the White/anti-Bolshevik resistance had either been destroyed or fled the country, but there was no sliver of hope for anything other than a Red victory following the abortive Moscow offensive in the fall of 1919.  

Denikin’s Armed Forces of South Russia retreated back to the Don from which the Whites had held since the earliest days of the Bolshevik Revolution, trying to consolidate their base while regrouping and resupplying.  But the Western Allies had already abandoned their makeshift White allies.  The last Western soldiers had left the northern Russian port cities by the fall of 1919, and outside of some French and Greek presence, had done the same in the Don and Crimea.  Only in Siberia did the Western powers maintain some level of military strength, propping up Admiral Alexander Kolchak but largely trying to carve out territorial gains for themselves, as the Japanese did until as late as 1922.  Without Western support, the remaining White outposts slowly collapsed, with one of the last acts of Western aid being the evacuation of the remainder of Denikin’s forces on the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk to Crimea, an operation that saved 40,000 White soldiers – but still left 20,000 at the mercy of the advancing Bolsheviks.

On the other end of the crumbling Russian Republic, Alexander Kolchak found how little the Western powers were willing to risk to continue to support his regime.  With few White soldiers under his command, the Bolsheviks had begun to make significant advances at the same time as the defeated Moscow campaign.  Forced to retreat, Kolchak was held by the Czechoslovak Legion and turned over to the Bolsheviks in February of 1920 in exchange for safe passage.  Kolchak and a handful of government officials would be immediately shot by the local Bolshevik command.  As they lined Kolchak up against the wall, the “Supreme Ruler” of Russia asked his executioners to cable his wife that his last words were blessing their son.  “I’ll see what can be done, if I don’t forget about it,” the commander dismissively replied.  Kolchak’s body was beaten, abused and then dumped in an icy river, never to be recovered.

Defeat at Novorossiysk caused Denikin to resign his command of the White Army in early 1920, leading to a near suicidal offensive that summer and fall which consumed the last of the White’s reserves.  Despite the victories of the Polish Army, upon which the White armies had hoped they could ally themselves in a last ditch effort to overthrow the Bolsheviks, it was clear that the Soviets still maintained a vastly superior force to what remained of the White opposition.  Seeing no future, the last remnants of the Whites in southern Russia fled for Constantinople in November of 1920.  Hundreds of thousands of civilians and soldiers refused to follow, believing Bolshevik offers of amnesty if they surrendered.  Anywhere from 50,000 to 120,000 would be executed instead as the Reds captured the last of White territory, with pockets of resistance continuing into 1921.

Anywhere from 7-12 million soldiers and civilians would perish in the Russian Civil War, having followed an estimated 2.7 million dead during the Great War.  Death and destruction would only continue as the years progressed and Bolshevik rule consolidated and transformed into an increasingly brutal dictatorship – a final, cruel insult to those who took to overthrow the former Tsarist regime for its violence and repression.