Russian Civil War (Nazi Cold War)

The Russian Civil War was a multi-party war in the former Russian Empire, following the double revolutions of 1917. The two largest factions of the conflict were the Red Army, representing Marxist socialism, and the White Movement, composed of an alchemy of ideas ranging from monarchism to democracy to military dictatorship. Rival socialists and politically unaffiliated Green Armies fought both sides. Foreign nations also played a role in the war, as the German Empire and the Allies intervened against the Reds.

The war ended in an invasion of the Russian heartland by Lieutenant General Anton Denikin's forces, culminating in the capture of Moscow and the unconditional surrender of the Bolshevik government and the establishment of a British-style constitutional monarchy with the czar serving only a symbolic role.

Many independence movements sprung up in the wake of the dissolution of Imperial Russia and the fighting of the war. Armenia, Poland, Finland, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Siberia, Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania established themselves as sovereign countries after years under Russian control.

Background
The Double Revolution of 1917

By the beginning of 1917, the Russian Empire was teetering on the verge of collapse. The country’s mismanaged involvement in the Great War led to large amounts of land falling into the possession of Germany. The disastrous war effort had taken its toll on the country’s frail economy.

On March 8, 1917, disgruntled people in the capital city of Petrograd took to the streets to demand food and fuel. The local reserve troops were called in to put down the riots, but would join the strikers instead. The Duma, seeing that the imperial government had lost all credibility, formed the Russian Provisional Government (RPG).

Czar Nicholas II attempted to return to Petrograd by train, but was stopped at Pskov by striking railroad workers. The Duma and numerous high-ranking military officers requested that Nicholas abdicate, to which the czar complied on March 15. Grasping for a victory on the Eastern front, the German High Command shipped Bolshevik leader Vladimir I. Lenin to Petrograd aboard a sealed train. The Bolshevik Party rapidly gained momentum and attempted to seize power in July. The police swiftly put down the uprising. Lenin fled to Finland, but other party officials such as Leon Trotsky were incarcerated. Aleksandr Kerensky became Prime Minister and ordered the arrest of Lenin.

General Lavr Kornilov, seeing the RPG as weak in light of the July Days, attempted a coup d’état. Kerensky, out of desperation, released numerous Bolsheviks from prison and armed them in an effort to stop Kornilov.

Now with weapons, the Bolsheviks could make their move. On November 6, they seized control of key positions around Petrograd: bridges, train stations, power plants, banks, the Peter-Paul Fortress, the cruiser Aurora, and the like. This culminated in a putsch against the RPG’s seat at the Winter Palace. In the early hours of November 7, the government had been dissolved. Kerensky, meanwhile, had fled the city in a car provided by the American embassy.

Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and early rebellions.
Among the first groups to resist the new Bolshevik state were the Cossacks. During the Battle of Pulkovo, seven hundred under the command of Piotr Krasnov participated in the fight, but were beaten by the superior forces of the Red Guard.

An armistice between Germany and the RSFSR was signed on December 16, 1917. Lenin’s enemies attributed this to the accusation of the Bolshevik leader being a German spy. Huge portions of the former empire were ceded to the Central Powers, infuriating Russian conservatives. Leon Trotsky refused to sign it, holding of a position of "No war, no peace".

In response, the Germans launched Operation Faustschlag on February 18, 1918 and met little resistance from the Russians. This pushed the Bolsheviks to bow to Germany’s conditions, as the Red Guard was still too disorganized to stop the invasion. The peace treaty, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, was ratified on March 6. The surrender prompted many nationalists to join the White movement.  Birth of the White Movement Initially, the White movement began as reaction against the Bolshevik revolution. At that time, the counter revolution had no clear goals apart from the removal of Lenin from power. After three days of debate at the Livadia Palace, the White leaders reached a compromise on how to operate. The guidelines called for a Western-style elected republic with a czar serving only as a figurehead. While the move won over a number of officers, Aleksandr Kolchak rejected the terms and began his own war effort against the Bolsheviks in the Far East. The Western officers allowed him to do so as a means to occupy the enemy in Siberia and wear down the "traitor".

It was also agreed, after heated debate, that the greater evil to them was the Bolsheviks instead of the Central Powers. As a result, a non-aggression treaty was signed with Prussian commander Max Hoffman, promising not to attack the Germans when the fighting was renewed. This would allow for Miller to travel into the newly-formed Baltic countries across German occupation zones, as they had allowed Lenin after the February Revolution.

When Operation Faustschlag was underway, the Whites pinned the blame for the continued fighting on Trotsky's stance of "no war, no peace", cited as being contrary to their stated goals of peace with Germany. Multitudes of people from Crimea and Taurida, feeling the same way, threw their hats in with the Whites.

Germany gave autonomy to Crimea during the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk as a slap in the face to Trotsky's rejection of earlier peace terms.

More accusations of Bolshevik lies came from a network of spies operating in newly-formed Finland. Their clandestine reconnaissance revealed that the Bolsheviks had persuaded the Finns to join the revolution in the autumn of 1917. Furthermore, it was revealed that in January 1918, Lenin had sent a train with munitions to aid Finnish Communists: 15,000 rifles, thirty machine guns, two million cartridges, ten field guns, six wagon-loads of artillery shells, and two armored cars. The resulting Finnish Civil War was just another tool for the Whites to use against the Bolsheviks: Lenin's demands for peace were dwarfed by the man's desire for an expanding revolution. The presence of over 50,000 Soviet Red Guards in Finland contributed to this train of thought.

A new army
The first groups to resist the new government were the Cossacks. Piotr Krasnov of the Don and Grigoriy Semenov of Siberia were among them. By December of 1917, a small force under the command of the ailing general Mikhail Alekseyev and Lavr Kornilov began to develop near Tsaritsyn. By the end of the year, what as then known as the "White Volunteer Army" had occupied the city of Rostov-on-Don.

The growing threat of anti-Communist sentiment caused the Bolshevik government to create the Cheka, headed by Felix Dzerdzhinsky, and to reorganize the Red Guards into the "Workers and Peasants' Red Army" on December 20, 1917 and February 14, 1918, respectively. Trotsky, now Commissar of War, would oversee operations. It became clear that the newly-formed Red Army lacked military experience. To compensate for this, he drafted former imperial personnel, who were forced to abandon their anti-Bolshevik stances in light of the War Commissar's threats against their families.

1918


Kornilov's Ice March
After minor skirmishes in 1917, open conflict became broader in 1918. Despite Brest-Litovsk, the Germans continued to occupy cities in the Ukraine. Kaiser Wilhelm II, distrustful of Lenin's government sought to create a German hegemony in the region. On February 18, the Red Army occupied Kiev, but surrendered it to Germany on March 3. Rostov would also change hands from White to Red on February 24 to German on April 8. The Germans continued to occupy Ukrainian cities throughout the month and into April. As per the agreement with the White forces, they stayed out of Crimea. The Reds would occupy a number of Cossack villages in the Kuban during this time. Kornilov's men captured dozens of officers from the 39th Division during a battle at Lezhanka. He court-martialed them and would only pardon the captives if they joined the White movement.

The Red seizure of Rostov and Taganrog compelled Piotr Krasnov to consolidate his forces, numbering 11,000 strong, with Kornilov's. Initially, the Don were skeptical about openly supporting the Whites, but the recent Bolshevik occupation forced the decision.

After the fall of Rostov, Kornilov, joined by began the march south across the frozen steppe lands. The soldiers, carrying one rifle each, and hauling some field artillery, were accompanied by a long trail of civilians, the middle-classes of Rostov, fearful of Bolshevik reprisals. Anton Denikin, Kornilov's second-in-command, later recalled, "We went from the dark night of spiritual slavery to unknown wandering-in search of the bluebird." The bluebird was a traditional symbol of hope in Russian fairy tales and legend. The march continued day and night, sometimes in a long single-file through the deep snow, avoiding the railways and hostile population centres. Those who could not endure the ordeal, the sick and the wounded, were simply left behind, many shooting themselves rather than risk falling captive to the enemy.

The Kuban Cossacks were more willing to join the Volunteer Army than the ones in the Don. In Nezamaevskaya, the Whites gained one hundred forty recruits; two hundred ten in Ploskaya; five hundred in Vyselok; thirty-eight in Sadovy.

The dreadnought Svobodnaya Rossiya (formerly the Empress Catherine the Great) and aging warships Georgiy Pobedonosets, Sinop, and Borets za Svobodu (formerly the Potemkin) were acquired by the Whites for use against the Red stronghold at Novorossiysk on March 27. Caught off guard by the surprise attack on the port, the Novorossiysk surrendered. Ninety-one of the city’s defenders would defect to the Volunteer Army.

To the South, Yudenich landed at Novorossiysk with eight hundred volunteers from Crimea. A pair of Mark I tanks (both female), ten 18-pounder field guns, and eleven Maxim machine guns were brought with them by barge. The British, after the collapse of Constantinople the previous summer, began shipping materiel to support ex-Prime Minister Kerensky’s war effort to the Ukraine, but most of the shipping was hindered not only because of the Bolshevik coup but hit-and-run attacks by the Bulgarians in the Black Sea. With German forces being present in Ukraine, the Royal Navy blockaded the Dardenelles and Strait of Gibraltar, preventing German and Austrian ships from sending aid to any troops.

Some skirmishes occurred on the advance eastward. Defections to Yudenich’s forces, though not frequent.

Kornilov, meanwhile, received intelligence that the city of Ekaterinodar was held by the Bolsheviks. Initially, there were 9000 men in the unit versus the estimated 18,000 in the city. Having faced tough odds on the way south, Kornilov made a gamble to attack the city on April 1. For the first two days, the Kornilov unit was able to inflict heavy damage to the Red garrison but the defenders eventually pushed the Whites to the town limits.

On April 3, Yudenich reached Ekaterinodar. The siege had evolved into a pincer attack, with the larger Kornilov group in the north and northeast and the smaller Yudenich to the southwest. The Mark I’s were able to break through the western defenses. After a day of brutal street fighting, the Ekaterinodar garrison surrendered. Many Red regulars fled southeast to Maikop.

The Caucasus, Winter-Spring
News of Ekaterinodar spread southward. The newly-formed Republic of Transcaucasia had begun building its fledgling military. Pro-Communist influence was relatively weak in the region. An attempt by local Reds to seize Baku was put down on by local militia on April 20.

At the same time, the Yudenich forces pushed further south toward Sochi.

Kornilov, meanwhile, pushed toward the Caspian. Krasnov's Cossacks routed the Reds at Stavropol and captured much-needed munitions. By mid-May, Kornilov's division met the Transcaucasian army at Petrovsk Port, where they defeated the remaining Bolshevik rebels in the region.

The Don, Spring
After the capture of Rostov, things didn't go well for the Reds. Cells of Cossacks left behind prior to the Ice March began forming guerilla bands. Kornilov, from his headquarters at Ekaterinodar, began an incursion of the region.

Generals Yevgniy Miller and Vasily Boldyrev advanced from the Ukraine to support the invasion via the Donbass. The Bolshevik garrison at Novocherkassk was taken after ten hours of fighting on April 28. The Whites advanced easstward to Volgodonsk. Supplies were shipped to the front through neutral Rostov.