Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926

If anything, the “White cause” came only to be defined in a nuanced and positive manner (as opposed to meaning merely a desire to overturn the October Revolution) in the emigration (where many Whites ended up), by philosophers such as I. A. Il′in, who gave it a conservative, semimystical, and Slavophile tinge. (Beloe delo, it is worth noting, was the name of an important White émigré journal published in Berlin in the 1920s by General Wrangel’s collaborators in ROVS, Generals P. N. Shatilov and A. A. von Lampe, with the assistance of Il′in.) On the other hand, in the 1920s many other former Whites came to regard the Soviet government as being the legitimate bearer of authority (the “Russian Idea”) in Russia—after all, the Reds had won the civil wars and had largely reconstructed the Russian Empire in the form of the USSR—and cleaved to Smenovekhovstvo, the “Changing Landmarks” movement that sought accommodation between the Whites and the Soviets.

In contemporary Russia, however, Smena vekh has been almost forgotten, whereas the White generals are eulogized and have become the subject of many scholarly (and many more unscholarly) works, as well as works of fiction, feature films, etc. That many of the Whites collaborated with the Nazis during the Second World War is, not surprisingly, also not a popular subject of investigation. But the fact remains that von Lampe recruited Russian volunteers for the Wehrmacht, General N. N. Golovin trained them, and General B. A. Shteifon commanded the Russian Corps that fought anti-Nazi partisans across the Balkans, while the former White generals A. P Arkhangel′skii, F. F. Abramov, A. G. Shkuro, and others were prominent in G. G. Vlasov’s collaborationist Committee for the Liberation of Russia.

WHITE SEA KARELIA, PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT OF. Also known as the Provisional Government of Arkhangelian Karelia, this nationalist, anti-Bolshevik, and (reluctantly) pro-Finnish authority was created on 21 July 1919 at the large Karelian village of Ukhta (now Kalevala) and claimed authority over the area of northern Karelia between the White Sea and the Finnish border (consisting of Kondokskoi, Ukhtinskoi, Voknabolokskoi, Tikhmozerskoi, and Kesmen′skoi volosti). The government initially had six full members and six candidate members and was chaired by S. A. Tikhonov (21 July 1919–25 March 1920), although it was reorganized in March 1920 and subsequently chaired by Kh. A. Tikhanov (25 March 1920–10 December 1920). It received financial subsidies (reportedly to the tune of 8 million Finnish marks) from the Finnish government, which also granted it full diplomatic recognition in May 1920, but was formally committed to independence for Karelia, not union with Finland. (It was the latter, however, that Helsinki desired, the landscape, language, and people of White Sea Karelia—supposedly free of Russian or Swedish “corruption”—having become a core motif of the more romantic brand of Finnish nationalism in the 19th century, as exemplified in Jean Sibelius’s Karelia Suite.) As Red forces marched into the region in March 1920 in the wake of the withdrawal of Allied and White forces from Murmansk and Arkhangel′sk, the regime summoned a regional congress (23 March–1 April 1920) and demanded that they withdraw. Negotiations broke down, however, and the Red Army continued to advance (capturing Ukhta on 18 May 1920); in late June 1920, the government fled to Finland, as the Soviet authorities established the Karelian Workers’ Commune. After the Finnish government had unsuccessfully attempted to utilize its existence as a bargaining chip in the negotiations that resulted in the Treaty of Tartu (14 October 1920), the existence of the Provisional Government of White Sea Karelia formally ended on 10 December 1920, when, with its members still in exile in Finland, it merged with the Olonets government to form the Karelian United Government.