Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926

As Kolchak’s forces retreated in May–June 1919, the AFSR was preparing its own advance, having been delayed by having to subdue the remnants of the 11th and 12th Red Armies in the North Caucasus while fending off an advance of the Reds’ Southern Front that had recaptured Rostov in January 1919. On the other hand, during the first half of 1919 Allied aid was flowing into South Russia; it would eventually amount to 200,000 rifles and 500,000,000 rounds of ammunition, over 1,000 heavy guns and 6,200 machine guns, as well as around 60 tanks and 168 aircraft (together with vital training crews and engineers and spare parts). Also, a ruthless Red campaign of “de-Cossackization” had inspired another Cossack uprising on the northern Don in March, destabilizing the Red front, while to the west any meaningful pressure on Denikin’s left flank was dissipated when forces commanded by the anarchist Nestor Makhno and by Ataman Nykyfor Hryhoriiv, who were nominally allies of the Reds, both turned against Moscow.68 So, having cleared the Reds from the Don region in May–June 1919 (in a series of cavalry raids mounted by General V. Z. Mai-Maevskii), having welcomed into his ranks one of the most prominent of deserters from the Reds (Colonel N. D. Vsevolodov, commander of the 9th Red Army), and having finally captured Tsaritsyn on 30 June 1919, on 3 July 1919 Denikin issued one of the most fateful orders of the civil wars: his “Moscow Directive.” According to that order, the AFSR was instructed to move on to a general advance, along the network of railway lines converging on the ancient capital—a strategic offensive aimed at “the occupation of the heart of Russia, Moscow.” To that end, the Volunteer Army was to progress on a line through Kursk, Orel, and Tula to Moscow; the Don Army was to pass through Voronezh and Riazan′ to Moscow; and the Caucasian Army (of Kuban Cossacks) was to move in a loop from Tsaritsyn through Saratov, Nizhnii Novgorod, and Vladimir to Moscow.69 To some, including General Wrangel (who had overseen the Kuban Army’s capture of Tsaritsyn), an advance on such a broad front smacked of recklessness, but Denikin was probably right to gamble on a repeat of the sort of impulsive victory the Volunteers had already pulled off—by sheer force of will, time and time again, and against numerically superior forces—before the Red Army’s rich and populous base territory could produce numbers of recruits and weapons that no number of appeals to the “White idea” could outgun.

Interestingly, Denikin’s order made no mention of operations west of the River Dnepr, which he clearly intended to act as a defensive barrier on the left flank of the AFSR (and perhaps as a cordon against the Ukrainian anarchy that seemed to infect all who came in contact with it), but it was in the nature of the civil wars’ chaos that it was beyond the Dnepr, in right-bank Ukraine, that many initial AFSR successes actually came. As the Red Ukrainian Front shattered and the 14th Red Army disintegrated, White forces captured Poltava (29 July 1919), Kherson, and Nikolaev (both 18 August 1919). On 23 August 1919, assisted by marines landed by the Black Sea Fleet, White forces also captured the key port of Odessa and a week later entered the Ukrainian capital, Kiev.70