Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926

In January–February 1918, the force was engaged in battles with Red Guards and other Soviet elements around Taganrog and Rostov-on-Don during the so-called Railway War, but when forces of the Don Cossack Host proved both unwilling and unable to defend their territory from Red invasion, Kornilov decided to withdraw southward. Subsequently, the approximately 4,000 Volunteers (half of them officers, a third of them officer cadets, and the rest mostly students), along with as many civilians, set off on the First Kuban (Ice) March on 9 February 1918. Over the following months, facing continuous battles against Red forces in the North Caucasus, despite many losses (some units suffering 100 percent casualties), the size of the army increased to about 6,000 men (partly due to its union in Kuban with the Cossack partisans of General V. M. Pokrovskii on 26 March 1918). However, the Volunteers failed in their primary objective—to capture Ekaterinodar, capital of the Kuban Cossack Host—despite repeated attacks on the city from 9 to 13 April. The siege was abandoned when General Kornilov was killed, and General Denikin then succeeded him as commander in chief. New recruits nevertheless continued to locate and merge with the Volunteers (notably the 3,000-strong force under Colonel M. G. Drozdovskii, which had traveled 1,000 miles from Jassy, on the Romanian Front, arriving in late May 1918), and by September1918, as it engaged in another (and this time more successful) campaign across the North Caucasus, the Second Kuban March, the force had reached a strength of around 30,000 fighters. Many of the new recruits were Cossacks of the Kuban Host and the Terek Cossack Host, both of which had revolted against Soviet rule. In recognition of this, the army was eventually (albeit temporarily) renamed the Caucasus Volunteer Army (10 January–22 May 1919).

As increasing amounts of Western aid began to arrive, the world war ended, and the Allied intervention developed, Denikin (who succeeded to the supreme command following Alekseev’s death from cancer in September 1918) was able to capture virtually all the North Caucasus by the end of 1918 and to drive the 11th Red Army from the region. At that point, the Volunteers (now 48,000 strong) united with the Don Army, the Crimean–Azov Volunteer Army, and other formations to forge what proved to be a sometimes uneasy alliance between the Cossacks and the Whites in the AFSR (from 8 January 1919). On 22 May 1919, the Volunteers were again separated from the Cossacks to form the Volunteer Army (operating between Kursk and Orel) and the Caucasian Army (operating around Tsaritsyn) within the AFSR. In that formation they participated in the Moscow offensive of the AFSR, capturing numerous towns and cities, including Khar′kov (27 June 1919). When, in 1919–1920, the AFSR was defeated by the Red Army before Moscow and driven back, its forces fled toward the Black Sea, and remnants of the Volunteer Army (about 5,000 men), now redubbed the Independent Volunteer Corps (under General A. P. Kutepov), were evacuated from Novorossiisk to Crimea, where they formed part of the Russian Army of General P. N. Wrangel.

The Volunteer Army’s supreme leader was General Alekseev (27 December 1917–25 September 1918). Its commanders were General Kornilov (27 December 1917–9 April 1918); General Denikin (9 April 1918–27 December 1918); General Wrangel (27 December 1918–8 May 1919 and December 1919–January 1920); and General V. Z. Mai-Maevskii (10 May–27 November 1919). Its chiefs of staff were General I. P. Romanovskii (27 February 1917–1 January 1919); General Ia. D. Iuzefovich (acting, 1 January 1919–8 May 1919); and General P. N. Shatilov (13 December 1919–January 1920).

VOROSHILOV, KLIMENT (“KLIM”) EFEREMOVICH (4 February 1881–2 December 1969). Marshal of the Soviet Union (20 November 1935). The Soviet politician and military commander Klim Voroshilov, who was to become a close associate of J. V. Stalin both during and after the civil-war period, was born at Verkhne, Ekaterinoslav guberniia, into the family of a railway worker, and attended the local village school. Records indicate that he joined the Russian Social-Democratic Party in 1903 and was exiled to northern Russia for three years in 1907, while Soviet sources describe him as being active in party work in Baku, St. Petersburg, and Tsaritsyn before the revolution. However, few documented traces exist of any significant political activity on Voroshilov’s part until he emerged as chairman of the Lugansk Soviet, in March 1917.