Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926

WHITE TERROR. Although the Whites in the civil wars did not develop an institutional organizations akin to the Cheka for inflicting terror on the general population, did not pass laws ordering it (as was the case with the Red Terror), and did not write theoretical treatises defending it (as many Bolsheviks did), they practiced terror on a wide scale both individually and collectively. White leaders, such as Admiral A. V. Kolchak, frequently condemned lawless atamanshchina and the cruelty inflicted on the civilian population by rogue (chiefly Cossack) elements as “Bolshevism of the Right,” yet they were unable to prevent officers of their armies from taking merciless and often indiscriminate revenge against those whom they blamed for the collapse of the Russian Empire and Russia’s humiliation in leaving the world war. This was the case even on the streets of their own capitals, as in the Novoselov affair and the Omsk massacre in Siberia, and even when the victims of such terroristic violence were not Bolsheviks at all. General L. G. Kornilov, moreover, appeared to condone the use of terror, reportedly telling officers of the Volunteer Army in January 1918: “Take no prisoners. The greater the terror, the greater the victory.” And certainly individual orders were given by White commanders, throughout the conflict, to execute, without trial, any captured Reds who were suspected of being Bolsheviks, while villages suspected of harboring partisans were subject to widespread lynching and shooting.

The total number of the victims of the White Terror will never be known. It certainly runs into the tens of thousands, but is also certainly far less than that of the Red Terror (for the simple reason that the Soviet government controlled more highly and densely populated regions). The arguments over the justification of the White Terror are also unlikely to be resolved. At the time, and since, the Whites and their supporters claimed that theirs were acts of retribution for crimes previously committed by the Soviet government and its supporters (not least the execution of the Romanov family). That was vehemently denied by the Reds at the time and remains a dubious proposition in certain respects.

WINTER CAMPAIGNS. The Winter Campaigns were partisan operations undertaken by the Ukrainian Army, when it was on the point of collapse, in the rear of both the Red Army and (to a lesser extent) the Armed Forces of South Russia in 1919–1920 and 1921.

The first Winter Campaign lasted from 6 December 1919 to 6 May 1920, after the Ukrainian National Republic Directory had decided that defense of the Ukrainian National Republic (UNR) by conventional military means had become impossible. In this campaign, Ukrainian forces (mostly consisting of what remained of the Ukrainian Sich Riflemen and the Zaporozhian Corps) were commanded by General Mykhailo Omel′ianovych-Pavlenko, assisted by General Iurii Tiutiunnyk. Initially, the Ukrainian forces operated in the Elizavetgrad region, between the Red Army and the Whites, but when the Reds forced General A. I. Denikin’s armies southward, the Ukrainian group penetrated eastward, into the rear of the Reds. In February 1920, they crossed the Dnepr River into Zolonosha. Then, in April 1919, they fought their way back toward Iampil, which they reached on 6 May 1920. In this campaign, some 3,000 to 6,000 men (estimates vary) traversed at least 1,750 miles.