Crimea in the five years after the Russian Revolution had a large number of governments culminating in being a stronghold of anti-Communist forces and the place on Russian soil where they made their last stand.
Following the Russian Revolution of 1917, the military and political situation in Crimea was chaotic like that in much of Russia. During the ensuing Russian Civil War, Crimea changed hands numerous times and was for a time a stronghold of the anti-Bolshevik White Army. It was in Crimea that the White Russians led by General Wrangel made their last stand against Nestor Makhno and the Red Army in 1920. When resistance was crushed, many of the anti-Bolshevik fighters and civilians escaped by ship to Istanbul.
Approximately 50,000 White prisoners of war and civilians were summarily executed by shooting or hanging after the defeat of General Wrangel at the end of 1920. [1] This is considered one of the largest massacres in the Civil War. [2]
Between 56,000 and 150,000 of the Whites were murdered as part of the Red Terror, organized by Béla Kun's Crimean Revolutionary Committee. The figures related to the massacre in Crimea remain contested. Anarchist and Bolshevik Victor Serge gave a lower figure for White officers around 13,000 which he claims were exaggerated. Yet, he condemned Kun for his treacherous actions towards allied anarchists and surrendering Whites. [3]
According to social scientist, Nikolay Zayats, from the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus the large, “fantastic” estimates have derived from eyewitness accounts and White army emigre press. A Crimean Cheka report in 1921 showed that 441 people were shot with a modern estimation that 5,000-12,000 people in total were executed in Crimea. [4]
Crimea changed hands several times over the course of the conflict and several political entities were set up on the peninsula. These included:
Country | Jurisdiction | Period | Details |
---|---|---|---|
Russian Revolution and Civil War (1917–1921) | Crimean People's Republic | December 1917 –January 1918 | Crimean Tatar government |
Taurida Soviet Socialist Republic | 19 March –30 April 1918 | Bolshevik government | |
Ukrainian State | May –June 1918 | ||
First Crimean Regional Government | 25 June –25 November 1918 | German puppet state under Lipka Tatar General Maciej (Suleyman) Sulkiewicz | |
Second Crimean Regional Government | November 1918 –April 1919 | Anti-Bolshevik government under Crimean Karaite former Kadet member Solomon Krym | |
Crimean Socialist Soviet Republic | 2 April –June 1919 | Bolshevik government | |
South Russian Government | February –April 1920 | Government of White movement's General Anton Denikin | |
Government of South Russia | April (officially, 16 August) –16 November 1920 | Government of White movement's General Pyotr Wrangel | |
Bolshevik revolutionary committee government | November 1920 –18 October 1921 | Bolshevik government under Béla Kun (until 20 February 1921), then Mikhail Poliakov | |
Crimean Autonomous Socialist Soviet Republic | 18 October 1921 –30 June 1945 | Autonomous republic of the Russian SFSR | |
Soviet era (1921–1991) |
The Russian Civil War was a multi-party civil war in the former Russian Empire sparked by the overthrowing of the social-democratic Russian Provisional Government in the October Revolution, as many factions vied to determine Russia's political future. It resulted in the formation of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic and later the Soviet Union in most of its territory. Its finale marked the end of the Russian Revolution, which was one of the key events of the 20th century.
Anton Ivanovich Denikin was a Russian military leader who served as the acting supreme ruler of the Russian State and the commander-in-chief of the armed forces of South Russia during the Russian Civil War of 1917–1923. Previously, he was a general in the Imperial Russian Army during World War I.
Béla Kun was a Hungarian communist revolutionary and politician who governed the Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919. After attending Franz Joseph University at Kolozsvár, Kun worked as a journalist up until the First World War. He served in the Austro-Hungarian Army and was captured by the Imperial Russian Army in 1916, after which he was sent to a prisoner-of-war camp in the Urals. Kun embraced communist ideas during his time in Russia, and in 1918 he co-founded a Hungarian arm of the Russian Communist Party in Moscow. He befriended Vladimir Lenin and fought for the Bolsheviks in the Russian Civil War.
The White movement, also known as the Whites, was a loose confederation of anti-communist forces that fought the communist Bolsheviks, also known as the Reds, in the Russian Civil War (1917–1923) and that to a lesser extent continued operating as militarized associations of rebels both outside and within Russian borders in Siberia until roughly World War II (1939–1945). The movement's military arm was the White Army, also known as the White Guard or White Guardsmen.
The Red Terror was a campaign of political repression and executions in Soviet Russia carried out by the Bolsheviks, chiefly through the Cheka, the Bolshevik secret police. It officially started in early September 1918 and lasted until 1922. Arising after assassination attempts on Vladimir Lenin along with the successful assassinations of Petrograd Cheka leader Moisei Uritsky and party editor V. Volodarsky in alleged retaliation for Bolshevik mass repressions, the Red Terror was modeled on the Reign of Terror of the French Revolution, and sought to eliminate political dissent, opposition, and any other threat to Bolshevik power.
Baron Pyotr Nikolayevich Wrangel, also known by his nickname the Black Baron, was a Russian military officer of Baltic German origin in the Imperial Russian Army. During the final phase of the Russian Civil War, he was commanding general of the anti-Bolshevik White Army in Southern Russia.
Andrei Grigoriyevich Shkuro was a Russian military officer of Cossack origin, lieutenant general (1919) of the White Army.
The White Army or White Guard, also referred to as the Whites or White Guardsmen, was a common collective name for the armed formations of the White movement and anti-Bolshevik governments during the Russian Civil War. They fought against the Red Army of Soviet Russia.
The Southern Front was a military theater of the Russian Civil War.
Wrangel's fleet was the last remnant of the Black Sea Fleet of the Imperial Russian Navy and existed from 1920 until 1924. This squadron was a White (anti-Bolshevik) unit during the Russian Civil War. It was known also as the Russian Squadron.
The Crimean Regional Government refers to two successive short-lived regimes in the Crimean Peninsula during 1918 and 1919.
Rosalia Samoilovna Zemlyachka, née Zalkind was a Russian revolutionary and Soviet politician. As a revolutionary, she was best known by the alias Zemlyachka, though she also used the party pseudonyms 'Demon' and 'Osipov', and her married name was Samoilova.
South Russia or South of Russia, also known as White South was a short-lived military quasi-state that existed in Eastern Europe during the Southern Front of the Russian Civil War from 1919 to 1920.
The siege of Perekop, also known as the Perekop-Chongar Operation, was a battle of the Southern Front in the Russian Civil War from 7 to 17 November 1920. The White movement's stronghold on the Crimean Peninsula was protected by the Chongar fortification system along the strategic Isthmus of Perekop and the Syvash, from which the Crimean Corps under General Yakov Slashchov repelled several Red Army invasion attempts in early 1920. The Southern Front of the Red Army and the Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine, under the joint command of Mikhail Frunze, launched an offensive on Crimea with an invasion force four-times larger than the defenders, the White Russian Army under the command of General Pyotr Wrangel. Despite suffering heavy losses, the Reds broke through the fortifications, and the Whites were forced into retreat southwards. Following their defeat at the siege of Perekop, the Whites evacuated from the Crimea, dissolving the Army of Wrangel and ending the Southern Front in Bolshevik victory.
The Evacuation of the Crimea was an event in the Russian Civil War, in which the Government of South Russia evacuated over sea from the Crimean Peninsula, the last stronghold of the White movement on the Southern Front, bringing an end to the fighting on that Front.
The Northern Taurida operation was a military campaign in the Russian Civil War between the Red Army and the White Army under Pyotr Wrangel for the possession of Northern Taurida. The campaign can be divided into 3 stages: the White offensive, trench warfare around the Kakhovka Bridgehead and the counterattack of the Red Army.
Ulagay's Landing is the generally accepted name for a military operation by Pyotr Wrangel's White Russian Army, under command of Sergei Ulagay, against the Red Army in the Kuban between August 14 and September 7, 1920 during the Russian Civil War.
The Starobilsk agreement was a 1920 political and military alliance between the Makhnovshchina, an anarchist mass movement led by Nestor Makhno's Insurgent Army, and the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, which the Bolsheviks had established as the legitimate government of Ukraine.
The Kontrrazvedka was the counterintelligence division of the Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine. Its main functions were to carry out military reconnaissance, the prosecution of captured enemies and counter-insurgency operations.
The Bolshevik–Makhnovist conflict was a period of political and military conflict between the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic and the Makhnovshchina, for control over southern Ukraine. The Bolsheviks aimed to eliminate the Makhnovshchina and neutralise its peasant base. In turn, the Makhnovists fought against the implementation of the Red Terror and the policy of war communism.