Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926

From the moment of its formation, the Western Front saw extensive battles along a 2,000-mile theater of operations, involving clashes with forces of the Allied intervention around Murmansk, White and White Finnish forces around Petrozavodsk and Olonets and in Karelia, and against White and nationalist forces in the Baltic region, as well as forces of the Austro-German intervention (including the Baltic Landeswehr and other Freikorps units) and the Poles. Red forces were largely pushed out of the emergent Baltic States by July 1919 (during the Estonian War of Independence, the Latvian War of Independence, and the Lithuanian Wars of Independence), while in Belorussia the Poles advanced as far as the River Berezina. By August 1919, the front stretched from near Narva, on the Gulf of Finland, through Pskov and Polotsk to the Berezina. In June, and from August to October 1919, forces of the Western Front (specifically the 7th and 15th Red Armies) held off two advances from Estonia toward Petrograd of the North-West Army of General N. N. Iudenich. In 1920, during the Soviet–Polish War, the Western Front was the most important area of battle of the Soviet Republic, and by mid-August of that year, its forces were approaching the gates of Warsaw. The Polish counteroffensive, however, drove them out of Poland and Lithuania and back into Belorussia by October 1920. The forces of the Western Front were thereafter kept on alert against any further Polish incursions, before being transformed into the forces of the Western Military District on 8 April 1924.

Commanders of the Western Front were D. N. Nadezhnyi (19 February–22 July 1919): V. M. Gittis (22 July 1919–29 April 1920); M. N. Tukhachevskii (29 April 1920–4 March 1921; and 24 January 1922–26 March 1924); I. I. Zakharov (acting, 4 March–20 September 1921); A. I. Egorov (20 September 1921–24 January 1922); A. I. Kork (acting, 26 March–5 April 1924); and A. I. Kuk (acting, 5–8 April 1924). Its chiefs of staff were N. N. Domozhirov (19 February–26 May 1919); N. N. Petin (26 May–17 October 1919); A. M. Peremytov (acting, 17 October–13 November 1919); V. S. Lazarevich (13 October 1919–9 February 1920); N. N. Shvarts (25 February–30 September 1920); N. V. Sollogub (1 October–6 December 1920); P. I. Ermolin (6 December 1920–7 June 1921); M. A. Batorskii (7 June–23 November 1921); S. A. Mezheninov (23 November 1921–6 July 1923); I. I. Gludin (acting, 6 July–30 September 1923); and A. I. Kuk (30 September 1923–8 April 1924).

WESTERN RUSSIAN (BERLIN) GOVERNMENT. This anti-Bolshevik authority was formed in the German capital on 7 July 1919, by the right-wing Russian Political Conference, and was headed by V. V. Biskupskii. It had as its aim the establishment, in the Baltic theater of the “Russian” Civil Wars, of a 220,000-strong, pro-German force that would fight against the Soviet government. The force was to be financed by German industrialists and bankers, in return for Russian recognition of the independence of Finland and the autonomy of the Baltic provinces. However, the Western Russian (Berlin) Government was unable to gain the support of the generally pro-Allied White leaders in Siberia and South Russia, or of the White delegations in France during the Paris Peace Conference, and its only contribution to the anti-Bolshevik war effort seems to have been to supply arms to the Western Volunteer Army of P. R. Bermondt-Avalov. Following the establishment of the Russian Western Governing Council at Mitau (Jelgava) in September 1919, Biskupskii’s regime ceased to operate.

WESTERN SIBERIAN COMMISSARIAT. This anti-Bolshevik grouping had been charged by P. Ia. Derber with the organization of an anti-Bolshevik underground in Western Siberia following the dispersal from Tomsk (in January–February 1918) of the Provisional Government of Autonomous Siberia and his own flight to the Far East, in January 1918. The Western Siberian Commissariat first convened, in secret, at Novonikolaevsk on 14 February 1918, and subsequently gained the support of the cooperative movement in Siberia, notably the Zakupsbyt organization (which had its headquarters at Novonikolaevsk), but had little success in persuading proto-White, anti-Bolshevik officers’ organizations to recognize its authority (and little more success in attempting to establish a twin, Eastern Siberian Commissariat).