General Diterikhs’ Address to Russian Refugees (Girin, 1923)

Abstract

This article includes a previously unpublished document, an address to the military officials of the Priamurye Zemstvo Host and civil refugees. The address was written in April 1923 in the Girin camp for Russian internees formed as a result of the White Army’s withdrawal from Primorye to Northeastern China at the end of the Civil War. The address was authored by Lieutenant General M. K. Diterikhs, former head of the last White government in Russia, supreme leader of the Provisional Priamurye Government and the governor of the Zemstvo Host. The original of the address is kept in the Archive of the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace (Fund of General P. P. Petrov) at Stanford University. The document reflects Diterikhs’ views on the nature of the Civil War and the prospects of continuing the anti-Bolshevik struggle following the defeat of the White movement. According to the general, the Civil War in Russia had a religious meaning, being a confrontation between the forces of Christ and the Antichrist. Members of the White movement, as well as Russian society as a whole, bore the stamp of the sin of regicide. They opposed the Antichrist power of Bolsheviks only by means of physical force and lost. Meanwhile, the victory over the Soviet regime and the future revival of Russia of Christ was only considered possible through the spiritual unification of all opponents of the Antichrist and the creation of an anti-Bolshevik Brotherhood in Christ.