A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891-1924

To begin with, Wrangel had rejected the idea of an offensive. The British refused to support one and he himself preferred to build up his base on the peninsula. But with the Polish attack on Russia, Wrangel saw his chance. On 6 June he landed troops by boat on the coast of the Azov Sea and during the next few days pushed more land troops north into the Tauride region. This established a bridgehead on the mainland, doubling the size of Wrangel's territory, and gaining in the Tauride a much-needed source of agricultural produce for the swollen population of the Crimea. During August and September Wrangel tried to push north, into the Don and the Kuban. But his forces, hastily conscripted from the Tauride peasants, soon fell apart (it was harvest time) and the Cossacks had to spend most of their energies chasing deserters. By October, with the Polish war completed, the Reds were ready to concentrate on Wrangel. On the 20th they launched their counter-offensive: it took six days for the 130,000 Reds to force the 35,000 Whites back into the Crimea. Makhno's partisans did most of the fighting and took the brunt of the heavy losses on the Red side — for which Trotsky then rewarded them with an order for their capture and execution.¹⁰⁴

The Whites held off the Red advance into the Crimea, building fortifications at the Perekop Isthmus, whilst preparing to evacuate. No one had any illusions about their ability to hold out for long and virtually everyone who had any connections with the White movement wanted to get on board the Allied ships. There was a mad rush to buy foreign currency: on 28 October 600,000 roubles would buy £1 in Sevastopol; by I November the rate had risen to one million roubles; and by the 10th, when the embarkation began, to four or even five million. Given the huge numbers of people involved, the evacuation was a model of good planning. There was none of the panic and disorder that had accompanied the evacuation of Denikin's forces from the Kuban in March. The troops retreated in good order, holding off the Reds for long enough for nearly 150,000 refugees to board a fleet of 126 British, French and Russian ships that took them to Constantinople. Wrangel was among the last to embark

on 14 November. His ship was suitably called the General Kornilov: the man who had started the White movement took its last leader into exile.¹⁰⁵

For Brusilov the defeat of the Whites had a tragic end. Shortly before the evacuation he had been approached by Skliansky, Trotsky's Deputy Commissar for Military Affairs, who claimed that a large number of Wrangel's officers did not want to leave Russia and might be persuaded to defect to the Reds if Brusilov put his name to a declaration offering them an amnesty. Skliansky offered him the command of a new Crimean Army formed from the remnants of Wrangel's forces. Brusilov was attracted by the idea of a purely Russian army made up of patriotic officers. It would enable him to Russify the elite of the Red Army, as he had always set out to do, and possibly to save the lives of many officers. He agreed to Skliansky's proposal and prepared, despite his injured leg, to depart for the Crimea. Three days later he was told the plans had been cancelled: Wrangel's officers, Skliansky told him, had not proved willing to defect after all. Brusilov later found out that this was not true. During the final evacuation at Sevastopol the Reds had distributed — dropping by aeroplane in fact — thousands of leaflets offering an amnesty in Brusilov's name. Hundreds of officers had believed it and stayed behind to surrender to the Reds. All of them were shot.

Five years later Brusilov still found it hard to live with his conscience. In 1925 he wrote in his (as yet unpublished) memoirs:

God and Russia may judge me. The truth I do not know — can I blame myself for this atrocity, if it in fact happened? I have never discovered if it really happened as it was related to me: how true is the story? I only know that this was the first time in my life that I had ever met such fanatical evil and trickery and that I fell into such an unbearably depressed state that, to tell the truth, whoever found themselves in it would find it incomparably easier simply to be shot.

If I was not myself a deeply religious person, I could have simply killed myself. But my belief that every individual is responsible for the consequences of his voluntary and involuntary sins forbad me from doing that. In the revolutionary storm, in the mad chaos, I could not always act logically, foreseeing all the twists of fate: it is possible that I made many mistakes, that I will admit. But I can say with a clear conscience, before God Himself, that I never thought of my own interests, or my own safety, but thought only of my Fatherland.¹⁰⁶

Nine months later the old General died.

15 Defeat in Victory i Short-cuts to Communism