You should really read this introduction to the Russian Revolution (Part 5)

Russian Revolution: The Journey Home

This will be the final article in this series, I’m not going to restate all the qualifiers that normally accompany these (I just don’t have the room).

If you’ve read the previous 4 articles in the series, which you should or what follows won’t make a lot of sense, then you know the drill by now.

Part 1: The February and October Revolutions
Part 2: Post-Revolution Russian politics/The aftermath of the October Revolution
Part 3: National and ethnic divisions within the Russian Empire/The Ice March
Part 4: Ukraine, Finland, and the Revolt of the Czechoslovak Legion/Regicide

And now to the essay:

---

By July 1918, Bolshevik Party Chairman Vladimir Lenin was on his last legs. Although he had successfully overthrown the Russian Provisional Government in October 1917, the October Revolution was not by any means a done deal. The Bolshevik Red Army faced serious Russian opposition in the Cossack heartland of South Russia, where the counterrevolutionary White Movement had coalesced into two major forces, the Volunteer Army and the Don Army.

The former territories of the Russian Empire also refused to accept Bolshevik rule, and Bolshevik attempts to set up puppet governments in these secessionist nations had been met with disaster. Finland fought the short and bloody Finnish Civil War, successfully driving out Bolshevik-supported revolutionaries with help from the German Army.

Although Germany had supported the initial rise of the Bolshevik Party as a means to force Russia to exit from World War I (in which Germany and the Central Powers fought against Russia and the Allied Powers), the Germans had quickly soured on the Bolsheviks. The Bolsheviks were simply too unreliable and prone to atrocities. In exchange for peace, the Bolsheviks had been forced to sign the humiliating Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, which surrendered their claims to virtually all of the former Russian Empire’s territory outside of Russia itself.

Ukraine declared its independence from Russia under the Ukrainian People’s Republic (UPR). Although Bolshevik-aligned forces briefly managed to dislodge the UPR, this move led to the Ukrainians making a deal with the Germans to occupy their country. The Germans soon lost faith in the UPR’s erratic and leftist government, replacing it with the Ukrainian Hetmanate of Pavlo Skoropadsky. This military dictatorship, dominated by former Russian military officers, was transparently a German puppet state. However, it offered Ukrainian civilians a few months of stability after more than a year of anarchy.

With both Finland and Ukraine gone and South Russia in rebellion, the Bolsheviks encountered their greatest setback yet with the Revolt of the Czechoslovak Legion. Tens of thousands of pro-Allies Czechoslovak troops who had been a part of the Russian Army before the Revolution rebelled against a Bolshevik attempt to disarm them as they were being evacuated through Siberia, the vast undeveloped eastern parts of Russia. Local Russian counterrevolutionaries chose this moment to stage uprisings of their own and soon the entire region fell to enemies of the Bolsheviks.

As the situation outside of the Bolshevik strongholds of Moscow, Petrograd, and the other major cities of European Russia turned grim, the internal political situation also deteriorated. The Bolsheviks were not equipped to or interested in providing for the needs of civilians in the areas they controlled. Despite the heroic efforts of foreign relief organizations like the American Red Cross, shortages of food, medical supplies, and winter clothing became endemic.

Unable to supply even basic necessities, in June 1918 the Bolsheviks formally announced a policy of war communism. All businesses and private property were nationalized and all goods became subject to requisition. Strikes were forbidden by law and a system of forced labor was set up for the elderly and members of the nonworking classes. Less than a year into the existence of their utopian workers’ regime, the Bolsheviks had formally dissolved all the workers’ rights and stripped them of their property. Everyone under Bolshevik rule was effectively a slave.

Requisition gangs organized by the Cheka, the new Bolshevik secret police force, emerged from major cities and began to loot all farms that the Bolsheviks had physical access to. Although regulations only allowed for the seizure of surplus goods and equipment, in practice the Bolshevik food detachments (which mostly consisted of radicalized urban workers and Kronstadt Sailors) took anything they could find without regard for sustainability. Because of this, all agriculture in Bolshevik territory was disrupted. Farmers had nothing to plant the following season and no way to plant it. This caused a cascading series of famines that killed millions of people throughout Russia over the following years.

The open Bolshevik mistreatment of the peasantry and seeming surrender to Germany, a hated imperialist power, angered the Left Socialist Revolutionaries (Left SRs). The Left SRs were a radical offshoot of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, which had been the largest party in the Constituent Assembly, Russia’s extremely short-lived elected parliment that had been dissolved by the Bolsheviks.

The Left SRs were one of the only non-Bolshevik political parties that had accepted the Bolshevik coup. Because of this, Left SRs were awarded high-ranking positions in the Cheka and other important government agencies. Although the party itself had formally broken with the Bolsheviks after the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, Left SRs continued to occupy many critical positions within the Bolshevik administration.

On July 5, the Left SRs attempted an uprising against the Bolsheviks in Moscow, which had acted as the Bolshevik capital since March of that year. Left SR gunmen assassinated the German Ambassador to the Bolshevik government, Wilhelm von Mirbach, in the hopes of triggering open war between Germany and the Bolsheviks. Members of the Cheka loyal to the Left SR also captured Cheka Chairman Felix Dzerzhinsky, a ruthless Polish nobleman who had renounced his title and taken up with the Bolsheviks, along with several other critical personnel.

Despite these early successes, the Left SR coup was poorly planned and unaccompanied by any larger uprising. Most military units in the city declared their neutrality. The Left SRs were hostile to most other anti-Bolshevik groups and did not bother to coordinate with them in advance, placing their hopes on a popular revolt that would never come.

Soon the Latvian Riflemen, Lenin’s elite enforcers, gained the upper hand in the street battle around the Bolshevik capital compound. The Left SR rebels surrendered and were promptly executed. The remaining Left SR members still in the Bolshevik administration were removed.

Although the Germans had become increasingly belligerent towards the Bolsheviks, the enormous Bolshevik setbacks over recent months alarmed German High Command. With the instillation of pro-Allied governments across Siberia and direct Allied military occupation of the Russian Arctic port Murmansk, the Germans began to fear that the Bolsheviks would be overthrown and replaced with a pro-Allies Russian government that could reopen the Eastern Front of World War I. Despite its regional successes, Germany was badly losing this larger conflict and risked total collapse if any new front emerged.

The Germans decided to simply ignore the assassination of their ambassador and loosened their pressure on the Bolsheviks. Ironically, the attempted Left SR coup ended up saving the Bolshevik government, which likely would have fallen at the start of any serious foreign intervention. With the Allies unable (for now) and the Germans unwilling to move further, Lenin’s government managed to live another day.

In the anti-Bolshevik controlled south of Russia, a serious split had emerged between the Volunteer Army, led by General Anton Denikin, and the Don Army, led by Ataman Pyotr Krasnov. Although the two armies had collaborated closely in the preceding months, gradually power and resources shifted towards the Don Army.

The Don Army, which consisted almost exclusively of local Don Cossacks, had enacted conscription and accepted direct military aid from Germany. They had even declared the Don Republic’s independence from Russia. Although these moves allowed the Don Army to become much larger and better-equipped than the Volunteer Army, the connection to Germany also created diplomatic tension when dealing with the Allied governments on whose support the Volunteers relied. Although the Allies would provide mostly moral support at this time, in the coming months they would begin accelerating shipments of weapons and aid.

Krasnov was not hostile to the Volunteers, but refused to merge his forces with theirs unless he was made supreme commander of both. Most leaders of the Volunteer Army viewed the charismatic Krasnov as an adventurer (a label often attached to overly ambitious and conspiratorial figures around this time period). Denikin, although he was a competent military commander, did not have the diplomatic or social skills required to navigate these sensitive negotiations.

Unable to reach an agreement, the two forces decided to split. Krasnov’s larger Don Army would attempt to capture Tsaritsyn, a sprawling fortress city on the edge of Don Cossack territory that was home to many arms and ammunition manufacturing facilities. Denikin’s Volunteer Army would go south into Kuban Cossack territory, hoping to sweep aside the large Bolshevik occupation force that still existed in the region and gather new recruits. As a consequence of the Don Army’s alliance with Germany, all Russian anti-Bolshevik volunteers in the German zone of occupation were directed to the Don Army rather than the Volunteers. Officers who hoped to join the Volunteer Army were forced to travel in secret through German territory.

Although the Volunteer Army was much smaller than the Don Army at that point, the Volunteers consisted of the elite of Russia’s pre-Revolution military. Their Second Kuban Campaign ended up being a massive success. Well-led and well-organized despite their lack of equipment, the Volunteers pulled off seemingly miraculous victories against a local Red Army force that outnumbered by more than 10-to-1. Liberating village after village from Bolshevik occupation, Denikin’s force gained more volunteers and captured more badly-needed supplies every day.

Among the figures drawn to the Volunteers at this time was General Vladimir May-Mayevsky. Although he was obese, addicted to many different substances, and had a decidedly unmilitary demeanor (which would come to define his legacy), May-Mayevsky would prove to be one of the most brilliant cavalry commanders in the entire White Army, a term used to describe the loose alliance of all anti-Bolshevik military forces.

The Volunteers’ ranks became flooded with officers, to the point where they were forced to make entire infantry units out of officers alone. May-Mayevsky joined the force of General Mikhail Drozdovsky¹ as a common soldier, but quickly rose through the ranks as his talents became recognized.

The Don Army’s advance on Tsaritsyn proved to be much less successful than the Volunteers’ simultaneous efforts. Despite having many more men than the Volunteers, the Don Army was still heavily outnumbered by the Red Army. Don forces did not have the professional leadership and organization that might have allowed them to overcome those odds.

Furthermore, the conscripted Don Cossacks were reluctant to fight outside of Don Cossack territory. Conscription had been presented to them as a purely defensive measure. Although capturing Tsaritsyn would have crippled the Red Army (and potentially allowed for unification with the Whites’ forces in Siberia), the Don Cossacks were simply not willing to fight all-out so far from home. Krasnov was ultimately an elected official and his power was limited by his popularity. He was reluctant to take any of the stern disciplinary steps or unpopular moves expected of a military leader. Attack after attack on Tsaritsyn failed and eventually Krasnov was forced to return home empty-handed.

Tragedy struck the Volunteer Army during the Second Kuban Campaign with the death of General Mikhail Alexeiev from a heart attack brought on by a lengthy illness (likely stomach cancer). Alexeiev had founded the Volunteer Army together with General Lavr Kornilov, who had been killed in battle earlier that year during the famous Kuban Ice March.

The death of Alexeiev left Denikin the undisputed political and military leader of the Volunteers. Alexeiev understood that building the Volunteer Army would be his last act on Earth and got to see the Army at its time of greatest success: Coming into a string of uninterrupted victories and a rich new base to operate from in the Kuban.

Meanwhile, to the north, the Allies were finally ready to begin their anti-Bolshevik efforts in earnest. British superspy Sidney Reilly (this was a codename, even basic details of Reilly’s life are still in dispute) had formed an alliance with former Provisional Government Deputy Minister of War Boris Savinkov.

Savinkov was a Socialist Revolutionary who had been a terrorist bomber convicted of murdering several Imperial government officials. He had escaped from prison but returned to Russia following the February Revolution, eventually becoming a member of Prime Minister Alexander Kerensky’s cabinet.

Although Savinkov had been a radical leftist for his entire life, even murdering innocent people to advance the cause, his politics drifted rightward after he entered government. Attempting to work with the malignant Bolsheviks (pathologically incapable of engaging with others in good faith) and the various incompetent or fatally idealistic liberals of Kerensky’s government left Savinkov both disgusted and alarmed. He was the only high-level government official who tried to convince Kerensky that the Kornilov Affair was likely a series of tragic misunderstandings rather than an attempted military coup. Forced into hiding after the October Revolution, Savinkov pledged to end Lenin’s dictatorship by any means necessary.

Reilly and Savinkov organized the Ambassador’s Plot in concert with other members of the Allied diplomatic community. Hundreds of millions of dollars worth of bribes were distributed to various leftwing anti-Bolsheviks and a large network of informants and soldiers who would strike at the appointed moment was assembled.

Significantly, the Allied plotters made inroads with the the Latvian Riflemen, who had become generally demoralized as the war dragged on and the Bolshevik regime’s crimes against civilians accelerated. Although Reilly attempted to bribe the unit’s commander, the commander immediately informed Cheka head Dzerzhinsky of the plot, alerting the Bolsheviks.

Unbeknownst to Dzerzhinsky, however, Reilly had successfully found a large group of disillusioned Latvian Riflemen who agreed to kidnap and execute both Lenin and Bolshevik military chief Leon Trotsky during a planned meeting of the two in the first week of September 1918. Without their two titans of personality, Reilly figured, the Bolsheviks would quickly collapse.

The Ambassadors Plot was undermined by numerous leaks and false starts. In mid-August 1918, over Reilly’s objections, the Allies seized Arkhangelsk (Archangel), Russia’s second major port in the Arctic Circle. This new foreign invasion tipped off the Bolsheviks that the coup was imminent and stirred Russian support for the Bolshevik regime, which had been in freefall decline.

Subsequent large-scale Allied landings in Siberia, nominally to support the Czechoslovak Legion, further spurred public support for the Bolsheviks as an anti-Allies force. The new Allied Siberian detachment included enormous numbers of Japanese troops. While America might have had incoherent humanitarian motivations for its intervention in Russia, Japan was openly planning for long-term direct occupation of the region.

On August 30, one of Savinkov’s assassins killed Moisei Uritsky, head of the Petrograd branch of the Cheka. Uritsky was one of the most powerful men in Bolshevik leadership. Although the killing sent the Bolsheviks into disarray, the assassin was discovered and made the disastrous decision to try to seek shelter in the British consulate during his escape. He was forced out of the building by British guards and killed in the ensuing shootout with police, but it became widely known that the Allies were behind the latest attempt to overthrow the Bolsheviks.

Later that same day, Fanny Kaplan, a Socialist Revolutionary who was apparently uninvolved in Reilly’s plot, approached Lenin at a public event in Moscow and shot him 3 times with a handgun. Lenin was rendered unconscious immediately and rushed to the hospital. Though he nearly died that night, Lenin’s condition stabilized over the following months.

The failed assassination attempt blew up Reilly’s complex plan. Not only was Lenin suddenly unable to make the meeting where Reilly would have had both him and Trotsky kidnapped and killed, but the failure being apparently (albeit erroneously in this case) tied to a foreign power dramatically increased support for the Bolsheviks.

Dooming the plot for good was Dzerzhinsky’s decision to launch the formal² Red Terror after Lenin was shot. The Bolsheviks began to execute all of their political prisoners in custody, while also hunting down and killing anyone outside of prison whose loyalty was suspect.

Although this meant the deaths of tens of thousands of people who were totally uninvolved in any planned assassination or coup, among the victims of the new Red Terror were a few members of Reilly’s plot (though the Bolsheviks had no way of knowing this). Aside from direct damage to the Allied conspirators, the killings created a general atmosphere of paranoia and uncertainty in which it became impossible for the spies to operate. Reilly and Savinkov fled the country.³

The Allied plot failed, though the Allies still effectively occupied half of Russia. For the time being they turned their attention to organizing their new Siberian holdings into something that they hoped might serve as a legitimate national Russian government.

One of the key players tapped by the Allies was Admiral Alexander Kolchak. Kolchak had been banished by the Provisional Government to America shortly after the February Revolution. Although Kolchak was politically more liberal than most of his peers in the military, he had been an outspoken advocate of harsh military discipline.

After the October Revolution, Kolchak had become well-acquainted with the various Allied representatives. His good relationships with British and American diplomats made him highly valuable to local anti-Bolshevik forces. Although Kolchak originally planned to travel from Siberia to join the Volunteer Army, en route he was asked to assist with the Provisional Siberian Government.

The anti-Bolshevik civilian governments of Siberia were dysfunctional even by standards of the time. Indecision and idealism were the order of the day. Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, although they had been quickly removed by the Bolsheviks, were insistent that any new government be led by them and reflect the will of the short-lived (and liberal dominated) Constituent Assembly. Various monarchist and conservative Russian officers blamed these liberals for creating their problem to begin with, and also chaffed at having to tolerate what was effectively a foreign occupation.

Although Kolchak was neither corrupt nor brutal, he was a deeply awkward and private person ill-suited for a public facing position. His years as a senior officer in a dominant empire left him unprepared to take a role that was largely subordinate. He was seen as aloof, demanding, and arrogant despite having to rely on the charity (and bayonets) of foreigners. Relations between Kolchak and the Czechoslovaks (who made up the bulk of his effective force) were icy at best and deteriorated from there.

In the Crimea, the greatest figure of the Russian Civil War emerged. General Pyotr Wrangel had resigned his position in the Russian military after the February Revolution, retiring to a summer home by the coast. Wrangel had been awarded Russia’s highest medal for valor during World War I and had served as a military advisor to Czar Nicholas II himself. Although he was regarded as one of Russia’s most promising officers, he had refused to cooperate with Provisional Government after the Kornilov Affair.

After the October Revolution, the Crimean People’s Republic declared its independence from Bolshevik Russia and asked Wrangel to lead their military. However, Wrangel refused on account of the new Crimean government’s unprofessional and unstable nature. Although politically a monarchist, Wrangel was above all else practical. He would fight the Bolsheviks but had no desire to enter into the service of a government that he had no confidence in.

The Bolsheviks seized control of the Crimea in early 1918 and newly arrived Red sailors instituted a reign of terror, massacring anyone who might oppose them. Wrangel himself was arrested and almost publicly executed, but was spared thanks to the quick thinking of Olga Wrangel, his wife, who rallied their servants and several prominent locals to speak out on his behalf.

After going into hiding for months, Wrangel was given a reprieve when German troops pushed out the local Bolsheviks and set up a pro-German puppet government in Crimea. Wrangel then travelled across newly-stabilized Ukraine to Kiev to meet with Pavlo Skoropadsky, who had been a close personal friend.

Although Skoropadsky asked Wrangel to help lead the Ukrainian military with his mentor Count Fyodor Arturovich Keller, Wrangel declined, correctly predicting that Skoropadsky’s government would fall as soon as German troops inevitably withdrew. Wrangel then travelled to Belarus to investigate the state of anti-Bolshevik resistance in the north.

Finding little in the way of organized pro-Russian opposition to the Bolsheviks (the British were investing heavily in the independence movements of the various Baltic states, which were often hostile to the White Russians), Wrangel finally travelled to the Kuban, where he made contact with the Volunteers in the city of Ekaterinodar.

Wrangel swore an oath of loyalty to Denikin and joined the Volunteer Army in August 1918. He would stay with this force until its bitter end.

But that is another story.

---

And that’s it! This will be the last article in this series. I sincerely hope that you’ve enjoyed these pieces. Please remember that, as much ground as we managed to cover, there is much much more to the story.

If you want to extract information from this period, which is full of valuable insights that are very applicable to today, you need a broader understanding. An anecdote isn’t going to cut it. More trivia isn’t going to cut it. I hope that this brief introduction allows you get more out of whatever next steps you decide to take.

One final sobering note: I was struck when writing these by how it often seemed as though the Bolsheviks were going to lose forever. That’s the impression that I think most readers would take away from these articles. It’s the impression that most people at the time had, as well.

However, the Bolsheviks would not lose the Russian Civil War. More than 2 years of still fighting remained, from which the Bolsheviks would emerge stronger than ever. The Whites turned on each other after (and sometimes before) each setback and eventually fell apart. Defeat was snatched from the jaws of victory over and over again, often for reasons that today seem very stupid and petty.

The Bolshevik victory was total and complete: Over the following decades, they would gain back all the territory they had lost after the Revolution. Tens of millions of civilians would be killed by Soviet authorities before the borders of the Soviet Union finally stabilized after World War II, a catastrophic conflict that itself can be attributed to the outcome of the Russian Revolution.

I encourage you to never lose sight of the gravity of your situation. Losing has real consequences, both for yourself and others. As bad as things seem now, they can always get worse and get worse very quickly.

There is never any good excuse for pettiness, for bitterness, and for selfishness. These feelings are like a disease, a disease that can easily become fatal—as it often was during the Russian Revolution.

Going forward, I encourage everyone to put themselves aside and try to improve the situation however they can while they still have the opportunity to. There is nearly always something to be gained from trying to reach an understanding with people who you don’t align 100% with, and nearly always something to be lost when you throw away the chance for what might have been a much more powerful joint effort. Losing is, more often than not, a choice. Choose to live.

Everything’s ending, time to wake up!

Most people scroll by these messages, but once again I’d like to ask you (the person reading this) to please upgrade to a paid subscription. If less than 5% of viewers of this series upgraded to paid, I would not have to ask. Every single paid subscription really is an enormous help to me. It’s only $5. Please upgrade right now.

1. Drozdovsky, an ardent monarchist, was one of the few Russian military officers who took a hard line against the February Revolution from the beginning. It was difficult for the Provisional Government to remove him from his position because he was then leading troops (successfully) on the Romanian Front of World War I. After the October Revolution, Drozdovsky led a large column of officers who banded together for protection (assassinations of officers were extremely common) as the Russian Army entered a state of total collapse. Seeing their position was impossible, the column began an odyssey out of Romania, across Ukraine, and finally to the Don to join the Volunteer Army. As the column travelled, it steadily grew as more and more officers were rescued. It was only the surprise entry of Drozdovsky’s column (the two forces were unaware of each other beforehand) that had allowed the Don Army to take Novocherkassk, the Don Cossack capital, from the Bolsheviks. Drozdovsky fought bravely with the Volunteer Army until he was wounded in October 1918. Although at the time the wound seemed superficial, he never recovered from his injuries and died on New Years Day 1919. He was one of the Volunteer Army’s most popular officers and his men named their unit, one of the most elite in the White Army, in his honor: The Drozdovsky Rifle Division.

2. Bolshevik atrocities, commonplace before this point, were collectively referred to as the “Red Terror,” however after the attempt on Lenin’s life it became a matter of official government policy. The mass killings were conducted as a systemic and organized effort to throw any potential counterrevolutionary plots off balance.

3. Both Reilly and Savinkov would remain active in Russian White émigré circles, attempting to overthrow the Bolshevik regime after the Civil War. However, both men were eventually lured back to the Soviet Union and killed as a part of Operation Trust, an extremely successful counterintelligence operation conducted by the Soviet State Political Directorate (GPU), a successor organization to the Cheka. Using high-level White defectors (who were either bribed or blackmailed into cooperating), the Cheka infiltrated White refugee organizations abroad and created an elaborate fake conspiracy that supposedly was always on the verge of overthrowing the Bolsheviks. Trust agents created the false impression that Bolshevik Russia was either all-powerful (delaying action until conditions improved) or extremely weak (making any action seem like a risky interruption). Operation Trust redirected valuable resources away from anti-Bolshevik plots that might have otherwise been viable while also introducing substantial confusion and paranoia into the ranks of the White émigrés. Numerous high level White leaders in exile were kidnapped and killed as result of Operation Trust. It remains one of the most successful counterintelligence operations of all time.