Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926

48. The 26 Commissars were subsequently executed in mysterious circumstances by forces of the democratic counterrevolution in Transcaspia. See below.

49. Peter Kenez, “The Relations between the Volunteer Army and Georgia, 1918–1920: A Case Study in Disunity,” Slavonic and east European Review 48 (1970): 403–24. In one more twist to the tangled events in Transcaucasia, during the bloody Armenian–Azerbaijan War that rumbled on through 1918 to 1920, the Allies tended to favor the Muslim Azeris (who had collaborated with Turkey in 1918) over the Christian Armenians (who had been fighting the Turks since the formation of volunteer detachments within the Russian Army in 1915) for fear that Yerevan’s ambitions to incorporate much of eastern Anatolia into its own domains might drive postwar Turkey into the arms of the Bolsheviks. For the British, an added concern was to pacify hostile Muslim feelings in its own Asian territories and protectorates. Realpolitik also guided Allied relations with Finland: General Mannerheim, elected regent of his country in December 1918, enjoyed good relations with London and Paris because, despite accepting German assistance to do so, he had at least fought and defeated the Reds in the Finnish Civil War of January–May 1918.

50. For detailed accounts see Mawdsley, Russian Civil War; and Smele, “Russian” Civil Wars.

51. Tsaritsyn not only barred the path of any union between White forces in the South and those in Siberia but also guarded Soviet Russia’s supply of oil, along the Volga, from the North Caucasus and its communications with the remaining Red forces in that region (notably, at this stage, the Taman Army). As such, the Reds made superhuman efforts to defend it, until it was overrun by White forces in June–July 1919). It was also in the furnace of Tsaritsyn that the first major clashes emerged between Josef Stalin and Trotsky over the employment of ex-tsarist officers as military specialists. See Richard Argenbright, “Red Tsaritsyn: Precursor of Stalinist Terror,” Revolutionary Russia 4, no. 2 (1991): 157–83.

52. The White victories were in part facilitated by what was to become a common feature of the civil wars: a mutiny. On 21 October 1918, the commander of the Red Army of the North Caucasus, the former Left-SR I. I. Sorokin, ordered the execution of much of the Reds’ political and military leadership in the region, thereby disorganizing resistance to the Whites.

53. Drozdovskii had attained cult status for leading a 1,000-strong column of men on a 1,000-mile march from the Romanian Front to the Don in February–April 1918. He, Alekseev, Kornilov, and Markov all had Volunteer units (the “Colorful Units”) named in their honor.

54. The most revealing study of the White movement in South Russia remains Peter Kenez, Civil War in South Russia, 2 vols. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971–1977).

55. In weighing the Russian Army’s chances of success in the forthcoming operations, it might have been of significance that of Kolchak’s chief commanders, only Khanzhin was a full general of anything but the most recent vintage. Gajda had the rank of lieutenant-general (since January 1919), but only 18 months earlier could boast only of the rank of captain in the army of Montenegro; Dutov had the rank of major-general, but had commanded only a regiment in 1917 (albeit with some distinction); Belov had gained the rank of major-general only as recently as 15 August 1918; and the hapless D. A. Lebedev had been made major-general by Kolchak only in January 1919 (having, according to some sources, been dismissed from the Volunteer Army in 1918). Of course, the introduction of new blood into the commanding staff was not necessarily a bad thing, and some of these men were of proven talent—Gajda, for example, had greatly distinguished himself in the Battle of Zborov (1–2 July 1917) against the Austrians, and as commander of the Eastern Group of the Czechoslovak Legion had performed miracles in clearing the Bolsheviks a region stretching from Omsk beyond Lake Baikal in 1918—but time would tell that they were not necessarily the best new blood the Siberian forces had to offer and that commanders overlooked by Kolchak because of their previous associations with Komuch (notably Colonel V. O. Kappel′) might have been wiser choices to lead the advance.

56. Smele, Civil War in Siberia, 308–12.

57. L. A. Krol′, Za tri goda: Vospominaniia, vpechatleniia i vstrechi (Vladivostok: Tip. T-va izd. “Svobodnaia Rossiia,” 1921), 172.