anti-Bolshevik Forces Research Articles

Volunteer Army in the Don and North Caucasus (November 1917 — December 1918)

The article is devoted to the actions of the Volunteer Army in the Don and the Caucasus in the first period of its existence. The combat path of the army was reconstructed and the political component of the anti-Bolshevik forces was presented. Much attention is paid to the historiography of the problem. The personal contribution of the leaders of the White movement to the successes and failures at the early stage of the struggle against the Bolsheviks is underlined. The author comes to the conclusion that during the entire first year of its existence - from the birth of the “Alekseev organization” in November 1917 and until Denikin and Krasnov reached an agreement on the creation of the Armed Forces in the South of Russia under the united high command of A. I. Denikin in December 1918 the leaders of the army made no major mistakes either in the military or in the political field; on the contrary, their firm and consistent position, supported by the army masses, made it possible by the end of 1918 to achieve obvious successes in the field of both military and state building and turn into the main anti-Soviet force in the South.

У истоков идеи Кавказской мусульманской конфедерации: о союзе Азербайджана, Дагестана и Горской республики в 1917–1918 гг.

On the basis of a significant amount of documentary and archival material, the article examines the background and development of the idea of creating a political and state association of the territories inhabited by the Muslim peoples of the North Caucasus and Transcaucasia. It is shown how the idea of cultural and national autonomy of the national outskirts arose in the course of the democratic movement in Russia in 1917, and how after the Bolshevik Coup in Russia, that idea was transformed into plans for the creation of independent political entities in Transcaucasia and the North Caucasus. The leaders of the Azerbaijani faction of the Transcaucasian governments repeatedly raised at various levels the question of the accession of the North Caucasus Muslim state entities to Transcaucasia, but the unstable political and military situation in the Caucasus made the resolution of this issue impossible. Until the middle of 1918, there were two opposing authorities in Azerbaijan – the government of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic and the Baku Commune. The North Caucasus was even more fragmented, both ethnically and politically. At the same time, the anti-Bolshevik forces of the mountainous peoples received almost no material support from outside but competed with the White movement that had emerged in the South of Russia for influence in the region. The fall of the Baku Commune and the seizure of Baku by the Turkish-Azerbaijani troops revived the ideas of the Caucasian Muslim confederation for a short time. However, being disunited, the forces of the North Caucasus “independent” entities were unable to resist the pro-Bolshevik forces in the region. The defeat of Turkey and Germany in the First World War at the end of 1918 made a serious change in the balance of power in the Caucasus region and marked a new stage in the development of the idea of the Caucasian Muslim confederation, associated with the attempts of the government of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic to achieve recognition of its sovereignty by the victorious Entente countries at the Paris Peace Conference.

«Недоверчивая сдержанность Вильсона»: американская дипломатия в поисках «русской политики», 1917-1919 годы

The article explores President Woodrow Wilson's search for a «Russian policy» during the final phase of the First World War, crucial period of the Russian Revolutions and Civil War. Between March and October of 1917, Wilson had faced a multiplicity of possible political outcomes — from left-radical to military dictatorship — from which he was unable to make a satisfactory choice. The present article clarifies the circumstances that prevented Wilson from, on the one hand, engaging in a dialogue with the Bolsheviks after they came to power and, on the other hand, the reasons for Washington's restraint in supporting anti-Bolshevik forces, not least during the period of US intervention in Russia. The author explains the US President’s difficulties in making these decisions and what were the boundaries of permissible American involvement in Russia for Wilson. The article reveals new aspects of Wilson’s approach to the tough issues posed by the «Russian question» after First World War — the continuation of the intervention, a possible compromise with Moscow, the «encirclement» of the Soviet republic, and the preservation of Russia's territorial integrity. Especially important was the issue of «Bolshevik expansion» westwards and US participation in the struggle against it in forms deemed appropriate for Wilson as an American peacemaker. The author believes that while Wilson's ‘deliberations’, including the ones concerning the ‘Russian question’, shaped the principal decisions of the Paris Peace Conference, he lost his struggle for a just, liberal world order to more sophisticated and conservative European opponents who supported traditional diplomacy.

Myths and Realities of the So-Called “Ambassadors’ Complot” against Soviet Russia in August 1918

Based on previously unacceptable or less studied sources, the paper casts a fresh outlook on the motives, driving forces and consequences of the so-called “Ambassadors’ Complot”, the organizers of which were planning a coup d’état in Soviet Russia in the summer of 1918. The author emphasizes the role of British diplomats and agents of special services in the preparation of a coup d'état, which was supposed to lead to the overthrow of the Bolshevik government and the transfer of power to the members of the specially established Directory with the support of the Entente representatives in Russia. Under these circumstances, as shown in the article, the position of Latvian riflemen — the backbone of the Soviet regime in Moscow and Petrograd — was of particular importance, cause a large part of them expressed willingness to take the side of anti-Bolshevik forces in the summer of 1918.

Проблемы взаимоотношений командования Белой армии с сепаратистскими правительствами на Юге России в работе А. И. Деникина «Навет на Белое движение»

The article studies some of the more complicated and sensitive issues of the Civil War in the South of Russia – relations of the Armed Forces of South Russia with the Krai governments of the Don and the Kuban and separatist movements as an important factor in the Whites’ defeat in the South of Russia. Both issues are covered in ‘Defamation of the White Movement,’ one of the last works of General A. I. Denikin. Its manuscript has been introduced into scientific use by the authors. Commanders and military authorities of the Volunteer Army with A. I. Denikin at its head were not tied down by regional interests and could pursue national interests in their policy in order to restore an all-Russian unity destroyed by the revolution. Regional concerns of the Don, Kuban, Little Russian, Caucasian independentists were in direct conflict with the national tasks that the Volunteer Army and the Armed Forces of South Russia strove to solve. Unlike the Don Ataman P. N. Krasnov, who was forced to cooperate with the occupation authorities of Imperial Germany, whose troops had occupied the territory of the Great Don Army for the most of 1918, and unlike other regional administrators in the German-occupied territories, the Whites did not cooperate with the occupiers and at times counteracted their anti-Russian policy. Denikin's propaganda successfully used this fact to fall back on traditional patriotic sentiments and to eat away at the Kremlin regime’s support. Centrifugal tendencies in the South of Russia did not allow the Volunteers to consolidate anti-Bolshevik forces and made an armed resistance to the Bolsheviks impossible. Hence A. I. Denikin’s uncompromising stand on separatist aspirations of independentists. In his view, it was the separatists’ activities in different regions of the former Russian Empire that hindered the successful offensive of the armed forces of South Russia, for instance, on the Moscow direction. Internal dissent was exacerbated by intervention of foreign forces – German occupation forces, the Allied Intervention, and active Bolshevik influence on the outskirts of the former Empire. The article compares Denikin’s text with testimonies of contemporaries and writings of historians. Thus, the authors have been able to show that his slender work reliably and accurately recreates the complex and dramatic situation, which led to the defeat of the anti-Bolshevik forces in the Civil War.

Autonomous Siberia in Russia’s Reorganization Projects at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century

The article investigates the projects for creating a self-governing system in Siberia between the revolution of 1905–1907 and the Russian Civil War of 1918–1920. Analysis of original newspaper articles and archival material shows that these projects shared an aspiration for the establishment of a democratic system of self-government. The Siberian intelligentsia (the oblastniks) believed that Siberian autonomy would promote the economic and cultural development of the region, while serving All-Russian interests. It was only during the deep social upheavals and crisis of power in 1917 when separatist tendencies became dominant among the Siberian political elite. Anti-Bolshevik forces in Russia considered the Siberian outskirts to be a “territory of salvation” for the future democratic non-Soviet Russian state.

The Corps of the Imperial Army and Navy in Its Struggle for the Leadership of the Russian Military Emigration in China (1920s — Early 1940s)

The desire of the anti-Bolshevik forces of the Russian emigration to avenge for the civil war they lost to the Bolsheviks highlighted the issue of consolidation of the remains of the White Army as well as creation of a unified command centre. They failed to achieve this unity. As a result there emerged two largest organizations uniting the former Russian military, i.e. the Corps of the Imperial Army and Navy (Rus. KIAF) and the Russian All-Military Union (Rus. ROVS). The article is devoted to some understudied issues of the formation, development, organization, and operation of the KIAF units in China between the 1920s and the early 1940s. The study is based on a n umber of little-known documents from central and regional archives of the Russian Federation and emigre periodicals. An important emphasis is made on the confrontation of the KIAF and the ROVS caused by their desire to dominate in the anti-Soviet struggle of the military emigration, as well as the reasons behind the failure in the activity of the Chinese KIAF units. Summarizing the results of the KIAF activities in China, the author points out the main causes of failures, namely, strategic miscalculations (the fact that they expected a considerable part of the Soviet population to still stand by the monarchist views and perceive the Red Army as a successor to the Imperial Army), personal ambitions and imperial patriotic romanticism of Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich, leading to a split in the monarchist movement and Russian military emigration, which led, in its turn, to unhealthy competition among anti-Bolsheviks, the absence of appropriate financial resources and serious deficiencies in the management of the Chinese KIAF units.

Terek Cossacks in the Final Phase of The Civil War in the Northern Caucasus (1920)

The article explores the little-studied period of the Civil War in the southern territories of Russia: the defense of Terek-Dagestan region from the advancing Soviet forces (mainly, by the Terek Cossack army) and subsequent retreat of the remaining part of the Southern Russian Armed Forces to the other side of the Caucasus Mountains. For his analysis, the author uses the historical and genetic method, referring to archive materials (from the State archive of the Russian Federation) and the participants’ memoirs. At the beginning of 1920, units of the Red army began a large-scale operation in the northern Caucasus aiming to destroy parts of the White army in Terek-Dagestan Region. The main part of the anti-Bolshevik forces in the region was made up of Terek Cossacks. For this reason the history of battles in the northern Caucasus at the beginning of 1920 is strongly connected with the history of the Terek Cossack army. The author analyzes battles at Terek in March, 1920, and reconstructs the evacuation of refugees from Vladikavkaz to Georgia. Also he discovers another way of evacuation — from Dagestan to Azerbaijan. The analysis demonstrates that in spite of retreat, the commanders of the army managed to preserve the Cossack units for subsequent anti-Bolshevik struggle.

THE FORMATION AND CRISIS OF THE COSSACK STATEHOOD ON THE TEREK (1917 – EARLY 1918)

The article highlights the creation of state structures on the territory of the Terek Cossack troops after the victory of the February Revolution of 1917. It analyzes the nature of the Cossack statehood and its place in the structure of the government bodies in the Terek region, traces the evolution of the power institutions of the Troops during the period of spring 1917 - spring 1918, reveals the causes of the systemic crisis which broke out in the Terek Cossacks in early 1918 and resulted in a temporary collapse of the military statehood institutions. The results of the study indicated that the seizure of power by Bol-sheviks in October 1917 in Petrograd became a conven-ient excuse for the Cossack elite, who were seeking to expand their political rights, to stand apart from the rest of Russia, declaring their non-recognition of the Council of People's Commissars. However, the increasing social and national contradictions between the Terek Cossacks on the one hand and the highlanders on the other hand, and the need for unity of all anti-Bolshevik forces, forced the Cossack elite in early December 1917 to cede partially their acquired sovereignty and to recognize the supreme power of the Terek-Dagestan government. This decision was perceived negatively by the Cossack radicals, whose positions prevailed in Mozdok and Sunzha departments. As a result, in December 1917 - February 1918 the Terek Cossack army had an acute political crisis, which caused the resignation of the Military government, the death of two military chieftains, the split within the Cos-sack elite and, as a consequence, paralysis and disinte-gration of all governmental institutions created by Cos-sacks in spring of 1917. All this resulted in a temporary fall of the political significance of the Terek Cossacks in spring 1918 and the establishment of Soviet power throughout the Terek region.

The Geopolitics of International Reconstruction: Halford Mackinder and Eastern Europe, 1919–20

This paper aims to reassess the role played by Sir Halford Mackinder (1861–1947) in the reconstruction of Eastern Europe after the First World War, highlighting a key issue behind the formation of his popular geopolitical ideas about the Eurasian ‘heartland’. Influenced by the democratic spirit of the early inter-war years, Mackinder used his geographical expertise in support of a loose federal reorganisation of the vast region between Germany and Russia, hoping to create a new, balanced international system capable of guaranteeing freedom and stability on the European continent. In 1919–20, this ambitious design became the basis of a short diplomatic mission to South Russia, where Mackinder tried to create a large regional defensive alliance against the Bolshevik regime externally supported by the Western powers. But the military weakness of local anti-Bolshevik forces and the political inconsistency of the British government led to the complete failure of this great imaginative project, revealing all the strategic limits and ideological flaws of Mackinder's geopolitical views on Eastern Europe.

On Political Terror during the Soviet Expansion into Lithuania, 1918–1919

This article deals with a noticeable anomaly of Bolshevik expansion in Lithuania during 1918–1919: the refusal of the Soviet authorities to resort to terror to subdue the local population in order to export the world revolution. The author argues that the Soviets avoided political terror in Lithuania because they did not treat the Lithuanians as a nation capable of sustaining their own state. In fact, anti-Bolshevik forces employed more terror than the Bolsheviks in their attempt to drive out the Reds and uproot Lithuanian support for the Communist regime. The Lithuanian left-wing government of Mykolas Sleževičius sought to contain its radicalized military and to preserve a soft-handed relationship with the local Bolshevik government.

Return to Soviet Russia: Edwin Erich Dwinger and the Narratives of Barbarossa

Virtually unknown today, Edwin Erich Dwinger (1898-1981) emerged as one of the most popular German authors in Nazi Germany thanks to his firsthand accounts of his encounter with Russia in the years 1915-20. He very nearly single-handedly produced the knowledge that Germans had of the Soviet Union on the eve of Germany's 1941 invasion--otherwise German readers relied on accounts of Napoleon's campaign 129 nine years earlier. (1) Together Dwinger's books sold some two million copies, making him a rich man, financially stabilizing the renowned Eugen Diederichs publishing house, and feeding Dwinger's thwarted ambition to compose the literary epic of National Socialism's victory in World War II. Along with the SS bard, Hanns Johst, who also saw himself as a new Homer in the Third Reich but was more faithful to Nazi ideals, Dwinger indicates how determined Nazi Germany was to aesthetically represent both the war and the Holocaust in eternal literary monuments that were to edify the new world capital Germania that Hitler envisioned. Indeed, Dwinger came quite close to imagining the local conduct of race war, although the victims he cast in his book, Death in Poland, were German, not Jewish, and the perpetrators Poles rather than Germans. (2) His relationship with Russia was more complex, however. A resolute anti-Communist, he could not help but admire the Soviet Union, which he by turn took as a model for Germany's regeneration in the wake of its defeat in World War I, as the fundamental foe of Western civilization which only a nationalist Germany could vanquish, and finally as a ferocious twin of National Socialism whose similarities to the Third Reich made it more dangerous and more invincible. He returned again and again to the Siberian ground where as a prisoner of war he had been caught between and Red. He was never certain whether to destroy Russia or to save it. He pleaded the case of the anti-Bolshevik General Andrei Vlasov at the end of World War II; Vlasov's willingness to serve the Germans recalled Dwinger's own wartime service fighting the Bolsheviks under the White general, Alexander Kolchak, in the Russian Civil War. As it was, there was little either general could do in the face of the Red Army's impending victory. Dwinger traveled through many of the contradictions of National Socialism, conceiving of Germans both as a horribly betrayed and as a powerfully vengeful nation and imagining the catastrophe of his Siberian experience both as the premise for post-World War I German politics and the logical if unavailing end point of those politics in World War II. son of a Russian mother and a German naval officer, and fluent in Russian, Dwinger joined the German army in 1915 but was almost immediately shot off his horse and captured by the Russians. He endured two years of Siberian imprisonment in Totzkoje before fleeing in the confusion of the Revolution. He was later recaptured by anti-Bolshevik forces, whom he joined and with whom he shared the disaster of retreat and defeat. Imprisoned in a camp, this time by the Bolsheviks, Dwinger finally succeeded in escaping and returned to Germany in 1920. It was not until the following year when the last of the surviving German prisoners of war, whose characters Dwinger sketched in his novels, were repatriated. It was this unusual experience of being a prisoner of war, watching the Revolution, fighting in the Civil War, and returning to postwar Germany that formed the basis of his trilogy, The German Passion, which appeared over the course of the years 1929-32 and recapitulated with each volume the increasing hold of National Socialism on the German imagination. Dwinger's plainspoken account of individual suffering in war gave way to an obsessive concern for Germany's national tribulations; at the same time, his horror in the face of the Civil War in Russia amalgamated into astonishment at the revolutionary energies mobilized by the Bolsheviks, whom he wanted to both destroy and emulate. …

Ehrenburg and Grossman: Two Cosmopolitan Jewish Writers Reflect on Nazi Germany at War

After the German invasion in 1941, World War II became a major, if not the major, topic of Soviet literature. Among the countless fictional works on it, however, those by Ilya Ehrenburg (Il'ia Erenburg) and Vasilii Grossman emerge as distinctive in one particular respect, their cosmopolitan perspective. I say cosmopolitan in the sense that though both writers, like the typical Soviet war novelist, sought to convey the experience of Russians going through World War II, their horizon of reference was not essentially defined by Soviet space but encompassed a more cosmopolitan, or more precisely a European, perspective. Given that most Soviet fiction about this war is intensely patriotic (1)--after all, the Soviets called it the Great Patriotic War--the war novels of these writers provide interesting studies of the interaction between the cosmopolitan and the patriotic, two categories that are far from always distinct. The typical Soviet vcar novel, and here Konstantin Simonov's Days and Nights (Dni i nochi, 1943-44) about Stalingrad would provide a good example, is largely about military maneuvers and relations between individuals in the Red Army unit that is the novel's focus. But Ehrenburg and Grossman had larger ambitions and used military engagements as a background for presenting their own ideas about history, politics, and culture. These ideas were framed by these two writers' account of the great confrontation between the Nazis and the Soviets, which they represented as not just a military engagement but a confrontation between two culture systems that would determine who has the right to lead Europe. In adopting this approach they were inscribing their war novels into the ongoing debates about Russia/Soviet Russia's destiny, debates in which Germany has often functioned as a point of comparison. Consequently, here I first sketch in brief this larger framework. During the decades leading up to the Bolshevik Revolution, a popular account among intellectuals of the special destiny for Russia was that the country, poised as it was between Europe and Asia, could save the Europeans from the Aslan hordes. After the Bolsheviks came to power, their spokesmen, including Stalin, though inconsistent in their mission statements, in effect often re-inflected the notion that Russia would lead Europe, providing various scenarios for the Bolshevik state to dominate the continent either politically or at least ideologically. Germany was a critical factor in Soviet efforts to achieve such dominance. The Comintern was based in Berlin, and the German capital became a staging ground for Soviet ideological (if not political) expansionism. After the Nazi takeover in 1933, however, Germany began to function as the chief antagonist and competitor in the international arena. This shift had its impact on Soviets' conceptions of their particular role within Europe. Now the hordes to be withstood were not to the East, or even so much the rapacious Western capitalists per se, as the fascist states and among them the Nazi in particular. In other words, they were within Europe itself. Moreover, Germany and even the German workers could no longer be seen as the main conduit for ideological expansionism, and the whole attitude toward Germany had to be revised. Party spokesmen and intellectuals were particularly troubled by the question how could a country (Germany) with such a developed communist movement and such highly conscious workers suddenly become so enthusiastic for determinedly anti-Bolshevik forces? How could a country of such high cultural achievement descend into one built on violence? After the invasion of June 1941, when Germany became the enemy, such philosophical and ideological questions were somewhat shelved as intellectuals became the mainstay of a propaganda effort that caricatured the Germans. The two authors I am discussing, Grossman and Ehrenburg, played central roles in this propaganda effort, both of them by working as war correspondents for the main army newspaper, Krasnaia zvezda. …

Muslim Crimea in the Beginning of the 20th Century Between Obscurity, Pan-Turkism and Sovereignty

In his article Anatoly Vyatkin distinguishes three main trends in the history of Muslim society in Russia's Crimea corresponding to three subsequent stages in the history of Crimean Tatar Muslim community under the tsarist rule and after its break-up. The initial period might be defined as that of non-existence or obscurity in the late 18 th through the late 19 th centuries. The second one related to Pan-Turkism and jadid activities of Ismail Bey Gasprinskii in the 1890s and the beginning of the 20 th century between the two Russian revolutions. The third period was that of sovereignty after 1917. Vyatkin concentrates on origins of Crimean Tatar nationalism and its political implications after the 1917 revolution and then under the German occupation. Weakness of liberal national movement, as Vyatkin argues, resulted in growth of radical nationalism of the Crimean Tatars who had failed to oppose to the Bolsheviks unity of all anti-Bolshevik forces. On the other hand, the end of German occupation made the problem of Crimean separatism as such irrelevant to any Russian political regime.

The Churchill-Mannerheim Collaboration in the Russian Intervention, 1919-1920

THE SLAVONIC AND EAST EUROPEAN REVIEW Volume 8o, Number i January 2002 The Churchill-Mannerheim Collaboration in the Russian Intervention, I 9 -9I 920 MARKKU RUOTSILA THE importance of anti-communism forWinston Churchill is well known toallfamiliar withChurchill's career andvalues. Itisalsowell knownthatChurchill playeda centralrolein the campaign for a military intervention inSovietRussia betweeni9I9 andI92 . Asthe Secretary of Statefor WarChurchill had plansdrawnup for a comprehensive militaryassaulton the Bolshevik regime,and he consistently strove tohavetheseplansaccepted andimplemented by theBritish WarCabinet andtheVersailles PeaceConference. When thisfailed, heundertook thesupply ofarms andtechnical assistance to various 'White' anti-Bolshevik forces andwasresponsible formilitary operations inthenorthandsouthofRussia andinSiberia. Churchill wasso dedicated to theanti-communist causethatPrimeMinister LloydGeorge tookhimto taskforwhathecalledthisunhealthy and overriding 'obsession'. 1 Lesswellknown istheextent ofthedetailed consulting andplanning inwhichChurchill engaged withseveral foreign collaborators andcoconspirators inthecourseofhisinterventionist activity. In 1919-20, Churchill energetically sought backing fromabroad hissupporters athomewerefewandfarbetween andtheplenary elitesatVersailles distinctly unenthusiastic aboutallfurther military ventures. Inrespect of Churchill's searchforsupport, historians havecoveredin some Markku Ruotsila is a lecturer at the University of Tampere, Finland and is a Founding Member of the Churchill Center, Washington, DC. ' Cambridge, Churchill Archives Centre, Winston Churchill Papers (hereafter, CHAR). CHAR I6/i I, Letter from David Lloyd George to Winston Churchill, 22 September 9I 9. 2 THE CHURCHILL-MANNERHEIM COLLABORATION detail his vain attempt to convince PresidentWoodrow Wilson of the meritsof Allied militaryintervention.Attention has also been given to Churchill's more successful cultivation of French politicians and generals (especiallyMarshalFoch). Some attention has also been paid to Churchill's clandestine contacts with the German military in late I919.2 It is our contention that Churchill'ssearch for foreign supportwas much more systematic,broad, and protractedthan has hitherto been realized. It included extensive and prolonged secret contacts and detailed preparations for military operations with representativesof several of those new states bordering on Soviet Russia which were interested in anti-communist intervention but whose initiatives had been spurned by the Versailles Conference. Early on, Churchill was told of plans draftedby militaryauthoritiesin these states,envisioning a concerted militaryassaulton St Petersburg,the main Baltic Sea port under Bolshevikrule. Churchill set out to cultivate representativesof these states, encouraged them to proceed with the elaboration of their plans, and (unofficially)committedhimselfto theirimplementation. Carried out mostly through the offices of Churchill's Versailles representative,General Sir Edward Spears, these contacts amounted to the defactoconstructionof a war coalition that would be alternative to, and partly independent of, the official remit of the British War Office and of the VersaillesPeace Conference. Itwas intendedthat this alternative coalition would launch operations against St Petersburg and outlying areas largely irrespective of Allied political decisions. Sustained by Churchill's friendly interest and assistance, such a war coalition could, once it had achieved its aims, effectivelypresent the VersaillesConferencewith afait accompli. Historianshave not, however, paid much attention to this scheme within the broader context of Churchill'sactivities,butwith theavailabilityofpreviouslyunconsulted setsof documentarysourcesit is now possibleto sketchitsoutlines. Finland andthe Militarg Intervention ofRussia (November igi 8-AprilI9I9) When he became Secretaryof State forWarinJanuary I9 I9, Winston Churchill hoped to effect a joint Allied intervention in Russia, in 2 Most studies of Churchill's role in the intervention debate concentrate on these themes, as well as on Churchill's interest in supplying the 'White' forces and his fostering of operations in the north of Russia. Very little attention has been paid to the abortive St Petersburg operation and even less to the secretive scheming with foreign anti-communists. See especially David Carlton, Churchilland the Soviet Union, Manchester, 2000; Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, Volume 4, I9I7-I922, London, I975 (hereafter,Gilbert); Michael Kettle, Churchill andtheArchangel Fiasco,London I 992 (hereafter, Kettle). Somewhat more attention ispaid in Alex P. Schmid, Churchillsprivater Krieg. Intervention undKontrerevolution im russischen Buirgerkrieg, Zurich, I974, but this work is overly tendentious in its ideological colouring of the evidence. MARKKU RUOTSILA 3 conjunction with the various 'White' Russian troops and all the borderingstates.Allied troopshad been sent to Russia duringthe First WorldWarin orderto reconstitutean easternfrontagainstthe Central Powers, and after the Armistice these troops remained theoretically availablefor new, specificallyanti-Bolshevikoperations.If so directed, they could cooperate with local 'Whites' and with the Border States and together destroyBolshevism.This plan, which its Frenchsupporters called the 'encirclement of Bolshevism on all fronts', was inspired by the convictionthatthe Bolshevikswere a...

Young Zhdanov (1896–1918)

Andrei Aleksandrovich Zhdanov's entry into the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) in 1915 was the act of an insecure teenager at war with the world. After the death of his father, a government school inspector, in 1909, the tsarist authorities had provided for Andrei's mother and her four children, and had paid for his secondary schooling in Tver. Even though he was thus one of the select beneficiaries of the tsarist social-support system, Zhdanov chose to join the Marxists who called for the Old Regime's abolition. Zhdanov's political convictions may have continued to waver for some time after 1915, contrary to the subsequent official version of his conversion. In 1916, he completed training as an army ensign without demur. He was awaiting dispatch to the front when the tsar abdicated. Then, presented with an opportunity, Andrei Zhdanov decided definitively to throw in his lot with Lenin's followers, the self-assured Bolsheviks. Once the Revolution unfolded, Zhdanov clearly could thank his lucky stars. Within the year, the determined RSDLP faction he supported gained in Russia. He probably did not always identify himself as a Social-Democrat in March 1917, but he undoubtedly considered himself to be one by early 1918. Leading a small Bolshevik group, he introduced Soviet power to a little town just east of the Ural mountains in January 1918, three months after Lenin and Trotsky had organized the coup in Petrograd.1 In June of the same year, under threat of the approach of anti-Bolshevik forces, Zhdanov revamped to Ekaterinburg. The Civil War would force him to leave the Urals, and in the spring of 1919 he arrived in his old stamping ground of Tver'. From there would commence in earnest his rise to the highest echelons of in the USSR. From 1919 to 1922, he was one of the up-and-coming leaders of Tver' province. A dozen years in Nizhnii Novgorod (Gor'kii) followed, ten years of which he served as provincial first secretary of the Communist Party.2 In 1934 he became a junior secretary of the Party's Central Committee, a position that he would combine for ten years with that of head of the Leningrad city and province Party organizations (as S.M. Kirov's successor). From 1944 until his death in 1948, Zhdanov joined Stalin and Molotov as one of the three most visible leaders, pronouncing publicly on foreign affairs and culture. His prominence inspired speculations that he was to be Stalin's successor.3 Although Zhdanov was a pivotal figure in history, instrumental in constructing the Stalinist edifice during the 1930s and 1940s, neither in Russian nor in Western languages has his life been the subject of systematic study.4 His youth and first steps as a (minor) leader present us with some key insights into his later behaviour as a leader. He would be Stalin's deputy in the 1940s despite his brief stint as an officer in the tsarist army or his rearing in a bourgeois milieu, according to Marxist criteria. These non-proletarian antecedents helped to make Andrei Zhdanov an exceedingly cautious Bolshevik, even though, ironically, his middle-class, intelligentnyi, background recommended him to Stalin in the 1930s, for Zhdanov seemed well-equipped to deal with matters of science, philosophy, and culture. Attentive parents and rigorous schooling helped to develop in the young man an indefatigable attitude toward work, another quality that Stalin would come to appreciate. As a teenager, Zhdanov joined a social-democratic network of young acquaintances who would rise with him through the Communist Party's ranks to reach the highest bodies of Party and state in the 1920s and 1930s. The devastating blow of his father's death when Zhdanov was thirteen contributed to the boy's sense of social and psychological insecurity, and induced resentment toward those more affluent whom he suspected to be looking down on him. One could suggest that the uncertainty that resulted from the disappearance of the adored authority figure of his father drew Zhdanov to the monistic Marxist workers' party in 1915 and then to the Bolsheviks with their peculiar leadership cult in 1917. …

Languages of Power: How the Saratov Bolsheviks Imagined Their Enemies

The Bolsheviks made civil war inevitable by forcing a showdown with the Kerenskii government in October 1917—and concomitantly with the moderate socialist parties, the Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs) and Mensheviks. The resulting conflict accelerated complex processes underway since February that exacerbated social polarization and fostered political and economic localism. Following the local Soviet's siege of the city duma in the provincial capital of Saratov in October, opposition forces began to contest Soviet power, which before long was reduced to Bolshevik and Left SR rule. As a result, the Saratov Soviet spent all of 1918-19 battling a variety of manifestations of discontent with the new political order. The calculus of civil war in the province involved the sustained threat to strategically located Saratov of White armies, which succeeded in striking against and taking the uezd (district) towns of Khvalynsk, Vol'sk, Serdobsk, Tsaritsyn, Balashov, Kuznetsk, and Kamyshin. Opposition from within the province proved every bit as formidable. Anti-Bolshevik forces, inspired by both the socialist and nonsocialist resistance, mobilized uprisings in all of the towns of Saratov province during the civil war; moreover, not a single uezd escaped the throes of peasant violence and resistance before this turbulent chapter in Russian history drew to a close.

America's Secret War against Bolshevism: U.S. Intervention in the Russian Civil War, 1917-1920.

From the Russian revolutions of 1917 to the end of the Civil War in 1920, Woodrow Wilson's administration sought to oppose the Bolsheviks in a variety of covert ways. Drawing on previously unavailable American and Russian archival material, David Foglesong chronicles both sides of this secret war and reveals a new dimension to the first years of the U.S.-Soviet rivalry. Foglesong explores the evolution of Wilson's ambivalent attitudes toward socialism and revolution before 1917 and analyzes the social and cultural origins of American anti-Bolshevism. Constrained by his espousal of the principle of self-determination, by idealistic public sentiment, and by congressional restrictions, Wilson had to rely on secretive methods to affect the course of the Russian Civil War. The administration provided covert financial and military aid to anti-Bolshevik forces, established clandestine spy networks, concealed the purposes of limited military expeditions to northern Russia and Siberia, and delivered ostensibly humanitarian assistance to soldiers fighting to overthrow the Soviet government. In turn, the Soviets developed and secretly funded a propaganda campaign in the United States designed to mobilize public opposition to anti-Bolshevik activity, promote American-Soviet economic ties, and win diplomatic recognition from Washington.

White gold: The imperial Russian gold reserve in the anti‐Bolshevik east, 1918‐? (An unconcluded chapter in the history of the Russian civil war)

THE ECONOMIC CRISIS currently besetting post-communist Russia has given rise to a febrile and potentially unstable cocktail of resurgent national pride and an acute awareness of national poverty. This in turn has inspired a mixture of reflection on the potential riches of a country so generously endowed with natural resources and nostalgia for the former, imperial grandeur of the pre-1917 regime. In relation to this, the alleged squandering of the nation's wealth by the communists has been a popular theme in the Russian media since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Also of note is that some attention has begun to be focused upon the fate of the huge gold reserves which had been accumulated by the tsars in the late imperial era. It is widely known that some Romanov gold was sold during World War I in order to feed the Russian War machine and that in the early 1920s the Soviet government exported gold in order to finance the import of Western technology. Not so well appreciated (particularly in the West) is the fact that a significant part of the Imperial Russian Gold Reserve found its way into the custody of Admiral Kolchak's anti-Bolshevik forces in Siberia and the Far East during the Russian civil war. Following the Red Army's defeat of the eastern counter-revolution in early 1920, much of the gold held by Kolchak was recaptured and returned to Lenin's dominion. Rumours as to the ultimate fate of the remainder, however, have abounded ever since: tales of its misappropriation, loss and illegal expenditure during the confused years of the civil war have become common currency.' It is the purpose of this article, therefore, to describe, in as much detail as the available sources allow, how it was that a portion of the Russian gold reserve came to fall into Kolchak's hands, and to present the

The French army and intervention in Southern Russia, 1918-1919

J. Kim Munholland, The French army and intervention in Southern Russia, 1918-1919. At the end of World War I French troops landed in southern Russia to support anti-Bolshevik military and political movements in the Ukraine and the Crimea. The French military expedition failed to achieve its objective, however, due to local conditions that prevailed in the region. French military leaders quickly became disillusioned by internal quarrels within the anti-Bolshevik forces that prevented effective collaboration against Bolshevik pressures, and they particularly criticized the Volunteer army for its arrogance toward local population. Strong, anti-foreign feeling among the people of the Ukraine convinced French officers that intervention in a climate of hostility was doomed without massive support. When the French government failed to supply enough equipment and manpower for extensive military operations, the French army faced defeat at the hands of pro-Bolshevik forces and counselled withdrawal of the expedition from Odessa and the Crimea. Military considerations had a decisive influence upon the decision to terminate active intervention and to turn instead to a policy of quarantine toward the Bolshevik regime and indirect aid to the anti-Bolshevik opposition.