Don Army commanders. Back: Grigory Kislov, Vladimir Dobrynin. Front: Anatoliy Keltchevski, Vladimir Sidorin, Lt. Gen. Konstantin Mamontov. (After Mamontov died the photographer drew the cross above his head.)
On 23 April, K. S. Poliakov's Zaplavskaia army merged with Field Ataman Popov's forces after their return from the Steppe March. Popov assumed command, with K. S. Poliakov as Chief-of-Staff, and organized the Southern, Northern and Trans-Don army groups under Denisov, I. A. Poliakov, and Semiletov respectively. On 6 May, the Southern army group was able to capture Novocherkassk, with the aid of Mikhail Drozdovsky's men. In April 1918, before the liberation of Novocherkassk from Don Soviet Republic control, a Don Provisional Government was formed under G. P. Ianov. On 11 May, the "krug for the Salvation of the Don" opened, which organized the anti-Bolshevik war. On 16 May, Pyotr Krasnov was elected Ataman. The Don Republic ordered the mobilization of Cossacks for six years. By June, with Denisov as his second in command, Krasnov has able to double the size of the Cossack army to 40,000. According to Peter Kenez, "The Germans supplied an enormous amount of war material during the summer of 1918. The Germans covered the voisko from the west and the Volunteer Army from the south, and so Krasnov was able to concentrate movements in eastern and northern directions. By the end of August, with the exception of five stanitsy, the entire voisko was liberated."[1]
Much of the Upper Don region, in 1918, had defected to the Bolsheviks, but as a result of the Red Terror, in 1919, rose up in arms against them, in what was known as the Veshenskaya Uprising. The main leaders were Pavel Nazarovich Kudinov and Kharlampii Yermakov. They joined forces with the Don Army centered in Novocherkassk, which was commanded by AtamanAfrikan Bogayevsky. These events form an important part of Mikhail Sholokhov's epic, And Quiet Flows the Don. Indeed, for a long time, Kudinov and Yermakov, who appear in the novel, were considered as fictional by the general public.
Kenez states, "The period from May to the end of July 1918 was one of uninterrupted successes for the Don army." By the end of July, the army consisted of 40,000 soldiers, and faced an equal number of Red troops. However, multiple attempts to capture Tsaritsyn in October, December, and January failed, as the Red Army grew in strength, and the Don Cossacks were reluctant to fight beyond their voisko boundaries.[1]:173–175
In the Winter of 1918-1919, the Red Southern Front, including their Group Kozhevnikov, 8th Army, 9th Army, and 10th Army, counterattacked the Don Army and regained control of the area northeast of the Donets and Manych rivers.
The Don army was often divided and plagued with indecisiveness, many of the Cossacks not wishing to fight beyond their own territory.
In January 1919, the Armed Forces of South Russia were created, uniting the Don Army and Volunteer Army, with Anton Denikin as supreme commander.[1]:204,267–270 The Don Army participated in the Battle for the Donbas (1919), led by Vladimir Sidorin. According to Kenez, "However, by the beginning of February the position of the Cossacks was critical. As a result of heavy losses and defections, the size of the Don army was greatly reduced. The once mighty army numbered only fifteen thousand men." Under Sidorin's leadership, the Don army advanced northward, and made contact with the Cossack insurgents associated with the Vyoshenskaya Uprising. The Don Army then grew to forty thousand by 28 June.[2]
In April 1920, after the evacuation to the Crimea, Wrangel organized the three-division strong Don corps, commanded by Sidorin, and later Abramov. According to Kenez, In spite of leaving thousands of Cossacks in Novocherkassk, this unit remained a substantial force." Yet, in November, Wrangel was forced to evacuate the Crimea.[2]:264,307
The events of those years, especially those centered in the Upper Don, as well as events leading up to them, are the focus of Mikhail Sholokhov's epic, And Quiet Flows the Don.
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.
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.
Alexey Maksimovich Kaledin was a Don Cossack Cavalry General who commanded the 12th Cavalry Division and Russian Eight Army during World War I. He also led the Don Cossack White movement in the opening stages of the Russian Civil War.
Pyotr Nikolayevich Krasnov, also known as Peter Krasnov, was a Russian military leader, writer and later Nazi collaborator.
De-Cossackization was the Bolshevik policy of systematic repression against the Cossacks in the former Russian Empire between 1919 and 1933, especially the Don and Kuban Cossacks in Russia, aimed at the elimination of the Cossacks as a distinct collectivity by exterminating the Cossack elite, coercing all other Cossacks into compliance, and eliminating Cossack distinctness. Several scholars have categorised this as a form of genocide, whilst other historians have highly disputed this classification due to the contentious figures which range from "a few thousand to incredible claims of hundreds of thousands".
Ivan Ivanovich Krasnov Russian: Краснов, Иван Иванович (1802–1871) was a Russian general and author.
The Southern Front was a military theater of the Russian Civil War.
The Ice March, also called the First Kuban Campaign, a military withdrawal lasting from February to May 1918, was one of the defining moments in the Russian Civil War of 1917 to 1921. Under attack by the Red Army advancing from the north, the forces of the Volunteer Army, sometimes referred to as the White Guard, began a retreat from the city of Rostov south towards the Kuban, in the hope of gaining the support of the Don Cossacks against the Bolshevik government in Moscow.
The Don Republic, later known as the Almighty Don Host, was an independent self-proclaimed anti-Bolshevik republic formed by the Armed Forces of South Russia on the territory of Don Cossacks against another self-proclaimed Don Soviet Republic. The Don Republic existed during the Russian Civil War after the collapse of the Russian Empire from 1918 to 1920.
The Volunteer Army (Russian: Добровольческая армия, romanized: Dobrovolcheskaya armiya, abbreviated to Добрармия, Dobrarmiya was a White Army active in South Russia during the Russian Civil War from 1917 to 1920. The Volunteer Army fought against Bolsheviks and the Makhnovists on the Southern Front and the Ukrainian War of Independence. On 8 January 1919, it was made part of the Armed Forces of South Russia, becoming the largest force of the White movement until it was merged with the Army of Wrangel in March 1920.
Afrikan Petrovich Bogaewsky or Bogayevsky was a Russian military leader from the Don Cossack noble family of Bogaewsky. He served as a lieutenant general in the Imperial Russian Army and also served as the ataman of the Don Republic.
The Armed Forces of South Russia (AFSR or SRAF) (Russian: Вооружённые силы Юга России, romanized: Vooruzhyonniye sily Yuga Rossii, VSYuR) were the unified military forces of the White movement in southern Russia between 1919 and 1920.
The Battle of Tsaritsyn was a military confrontation between the Red Army and the White Army during the Russian Civil War for control of Tsaritsyn, a significant city and port on the Volga River in southwestern Russia.
The Donbas-Don operation was a military campaign of the Russian Civil War that lasted from January to February 1918, by forces of the Southern Revolutionary Front under the command of Vladimir Antonov-Ovseyenko, against the Cossack troops of Alexey Kaledin and Volunteer detachments on the territory of the Donbas and the Don Cossack region. It was the decisive operation in the complete conquest of Russia by the Bolsheviks following the October Revolution.
The Steppe March was a successful military withdrawal by the Don Cossacks in Spring 1918, towards the steppe around the Sal River, to ensure their survival under attack from the Red Army.
The 10th Army was a field army of the Red Army during the Russian Civil War which existed from October 3, 1918, until July 1920. It was formed from the troops operating in the area of Tsaritsyn and Kamyshin. On May 4, 1920, it was renamed the 10th Terek Army. It was dissolved in July 1920. It was part of the Southern Front, the South-Eastern Front and the Caucasian Front.
Vladimir Ilyich Sidorin was an officer in the Imperial Russian Army and Commander of the Don Army between February 1919 and April 1920 during the Russian Civil War.
The Advance on Moscow was a military campaign of the White Armed Forces of South Russia (AFSR), launched against the RSFSR in July 1919 during the Russian Civil War. The goal of the campaign was the capture of Moscow, which, according to the chief of the White Army Anton Denikin, would play a decisive role in the outcome of the Civil War and bring the Whites closer to the final victory. After initial successes, in which the city of Oryol at only 360 kilometres (220 mi) from Moscow was taken, Denikin's overextended Army was decisively defeated in a series of battles in October and November 1919.
Vyacheslav Grigoryevich Naumenko was a Kuban Cossack leader and historian.
The Southern Army was an operational–strategic formation of the White Guards troops on the Don in the summer and autumn of 1918 during the Civil War.
References
1 2 3 Kenez, Peter (2004). Red Attack, White Resistance; Civil War in South Russia 1918. Washington, DC: New Academia Publishing. pp.123–124, 131, 138–142. ISBN9780974493442.
1 2 Kenez, Peter (2004). Red Advance, White Defeat: Civil War in South Russia 1919-1920. Washington, DC: New Academia Publishing. pp.21, 31, 33, 38. ISBN9780974493459.
"Istoriya Donskogo Kazachestva; s drevnejshikh vremyon do 1920" (The history of the Don Cossack Host; from ancient times until 1920) M. P. Astapenko.
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