Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926

A second impressive White operation launched in these weeks was also absent from the Moscow Directive (which might suggest that Denikin’s control of the AFSR was less complete than he might have wished). On 10 August 1919, taking advantage of a gap in the Reds’ Southern Front at Novokhopersk between the 8th and 9th Red Armies, General K. K. Mamontov launched an immensely damaging excursion of Cossack forces (the 4th Don Cavalry Corps) into the rear of the Red lines (the “Mamontov raid”), capturing Tambov (on 18 August 1919, and almost netting Trotsky himself in the process); wrecking lines of communication to the Red’s Southern Front; and forcing the Soviet authorities to declare a state of siege across a broad region encompassing Riazan′, Tula, Orel′, Voronezh, Tambov, and Penza provinces. For one day (11–12 September 1919), Mamontov even occupied the city of Voronezh, where his larcenous troops made merry and looted everything they could carry, as they had throughout the operation.71 Rather less successful was the push north from Tsaritsyn of Wrangel’s Caucasian Army, which suffered from a lack of supplies and from the absence of a north–south railway along the Volga and soon had to retreat. That sector was also being rapidly reinforced by the Reds with units switched from the Eastern Front (notably, most of the complement of the former 2nd Red Army). Perhaps key here, though, was the reluctance of the Kuban Cossacks to deploy their forces in regions so far removed from their home territory, despite several personal appeals from Wrangel to the Kuban ataman, General V. G. Naumenko.72 This strained relationship with the Cossacks, whose interests remained local (when they did not stretch to pillage and rapine) was the Achilles’ heel of the AFSR. Meanwhile, Wrangel’s force’s intermittent contacts on the left bank of the Volga with outliers of Kolchak’s Urals Army only sharpened a bitter sense of what might have been had the southern and Siberian White armies been able to combine effectively (albeit that, as mentioned above, Kolchak’s Urals Army was, by this stage, entirely isolated from his retreating Russian Army).

With its left flank fanning out across Ukraine and its right flank stalled on the Volga, the AFSR’s double-pronged spearhead was now formed by the Volunteer Army and the Don Army. Their departure north was delayed by a series of Red counterattacks in August–September. Nevertheless, in late September, the great Moscow offensive of the AFSR got properly under way, with its spine along the Khar′kov–Kursk–Orel–Tula–Moscow railway and its mailed fist consisting of the crack divisions of the Volunteer Army—notably its “colorful units” (the Drozdovtsy, Kornilovtsy, and Markovtsy), named for the fallen heroes of 1918.73 Kursk was captured on 20 September 1919, with Red units deserting en masse to Mai-Maevskii’s forces, and on 14 October 1919, the city of Orel fell to the Kornilovtsy, placing the White vanguard just over 200 miles from Moscow, primed to advance farther and anticipating the opportunity to rearm en route, as their forces passed through the city of Tula, home of the arsenal founded by Peter the Great 200 years earlier. On the Volunteers’ right flank, meanwhile, General Shkuro captured Voronezh on 30 September 1919 and welcomed the Don Army into the city a few days later.