The White movement failed primarily on the fronts of the Civil War. Scientists still cannot give an unambiguous answer to the question of the reasons for the defeat of the white armies, meanwhile, just look at the balance of forces and means of the parties during the decisive operations of the Civil War, and their cardinal and ever-increasing inequality will become obvious, which did not allow the whites to count on success . In addition, the most serious reasons for the failure of the Whites were major miscalculations in military planning and fatal underestimation of the enemy. However, the whites continued to fight and hoped for victory, which means that it is necessary to assess with an open mind whether these hopes were at least to some extent justified: could the whites in 1919 win on the Eastern Front?

It would seem that the white camp met the 1919 campaign much stronger. The vast territory of Siberia and the North Caucasus was liberated and retained from the Reds. True, the Whites did not control the center of the country with the highest population density and the most developed industry, but they were preparing for an offensive that was supposed to decide the fate of Soviet Russia. In the south, General Denikin, who temporarily suppressed Cossack separatism, managed to concentrate all the power in his hands, in the east - Admiral Kolchak. In the summer of 1919, Denikin even announced his submission to Kolchak, but he did this already at a time when the Kolchak front was bursting at the seams and the whites from the Volga region were rolling back to the Urals.

Supreme Ruler Kolchak and British General Knox

The spring offensive of the Kolchak armies began in March 1919 on the front of the Western Army, already on March 13 Ufa was taken by the Whites, and, according to some reports, Leon Trotsky himself was almost taken prisoner. On the front of the right-flank Siberian army, Okhansk was taken on March 7, and Osa the next day. Finally, on March 18, on the left flank of the Eastern Front, a simultaneous offensive began by units of the Southern Group of the Western Army and the Separate Orenburg Army, which by the twentieth of April reached the approaches to Orenburg, but got bogged down in attempts to capture the city. On April 5, the Western army occupied Sterlitamak, on April 7 - Belebey, on April 10 - Bugulma and on April 15 - Buguruslan. The Siberian and Western armies dealt heavy blows to the 2nd and 5th armies of the Reds. In this situation, it was important, without losing contact with the enemy, to vigorously pursue him in order to seize strategically important points before the opening of the rivers. However, this was not possible. Although the ultimate goal of the offensive was the occupation of Moscow, the planned plan for the interaction of the armies during the offensive was thwarted almost immediately, and there was no plan of action beyond the Volga at all. At the same time, it was assumed that the Reds would provide the main resistance near Simbirsk and Samara.

The left flank of the Siberian army slowed down the attack on Sarapul, occupied only on April 10, Votkinsk was taken on April 7, Izhevsk was taken on April 13, and then the troops moved to Vyatka and Kotlas. Meanwhile, on April 10, the Southern Group of the Eastern Front of the Red Army under the command of M.V. Frunze was created from the 1st, 4th, 5th and Turkestan armies, which from April 28 launched a counteroffensive that deprived Kolchak of a chance to win. Already on May 4, the Reds took Buguruslan and Chistopol, on May 13 - Bugulma, on May 17 - Belebey, on May 26 - Yelabuga, on June 2 - Sarapul, on the 7th - Izhevsk. On May 20, the Northern Group of the Siberian Army went on the offensive against Vyatka, occupying Glazov on June 2, but this success was only of a partial nature and did not affect the position of the front and, above all, the Western Army that began to retreat. On June 9, Ufa was left white, on June 11 - Votkinsk, and on the 13th - Glazov, since its retention no longer made sense. Soon, the Whites lost almost all the territory they had captured during the offensive and retreated behind the Urals, and then were forced to retreat in harsh conditions across Siberia and Turkestan, undergoing monstrous hardships to which the shortsightedness of their own leadership had doomed them. The most important among the reasons for the defeat were the problems of higher military command and strategic planning. It should not be forgotten that at the origin of each decision stood an officer of the General Staff, who had an individual theoretical and practical experience, their strengths and weaknesses. The most odious figure in the white camp in this context is the figure of the General Staff, Major General Dmitry Antonovich Lebedev, Chief of Staff of Kolchak's Headquarters.

Many memoirists and researchers call Lebedev the main culprit for the failure of the offensive of Kolchak's armies on Moscow in the spring of 1919. But in fact, it is unlikely that one person, even the most untalented, can be guilty of the failure of such a large-scale movement. It appears that Lebedev public consciousness became a "scapegoat" and was blamed for those mistakes and failures for which he was not responsible. What is the naivety and short-sightedness of other Kolchak commanders and himself supreme ruler! Ataman Dutov, for example, in an atmosphere of euphoria from the successes of the spring offensive, told reporters that in August the Whites would already be in Moscow, but by this time they were driven back to Western Siberia ... Once, in a conversation with General Inostrantsev, Kolchak said: “You will soon see for yourself how poor we are in people, which is why we have to endure even in high positions, not excluding the posts of ministers, people who are far from corresponding to the places they occupy, but this is because there is no one to replace them. The Eastern Front of the Whites had no luck at all with leaders. Compared to the south, there has always been a shortage of regular officers and academy graduates. According to General Shchepikhin, “it is incomprehensible to the mind, like surprise, how long-suffering our passion-bearer is, an ordinary officer and soldier. What kind of experiments were not made with him, what, with his passive participation, our “strategic boys” did not throw out kunshtuk - Kostya (Sakharov) and Mitka (Lebedev) - and the cup of patience still did not overflow.

There were very few truly talented and experienced military leaders and staff officers on the Eastern Front. The brightest names can be literally counted on the fingers: Generals V. G. Boldyrev, V. O. Kappel, S. N. Voitsekhovsky, M. K. Diterikhs, S. A. Shchepikhin, A. N. Pepelyaev, I. G. Akulinin, V. M. Molchanov. Here, perhaps, is the entire list of those who could be immediately attributed to talented military figures of the highest level. But even these more than modest human resources were used by the white command extremely irrationally. For example, Kolchak's coming to power deprived the Whites of such a talented military leader as the former Commander-in-Chief of the General Staff, Lieutenant General Boldyrev. It was about him that the Soviet commander-in-chief I. I. Vatsetis wrote in his memoirs: “With the advent of the gene. Boldyrev on the horizon of Siberia, we had to be considered especially. Dieterikhs was actually removed from resolving military issues for a long time, and throughout the first half of 1919, on behalf of Admiral Kolchak, he was investigating the murder of the royal family, which could well have been entrusted to a civil official. Kappel from January to early May 1919 also did not participate in combat operations, being engaged in the formation of his corps in the rear. The commanders of all three of Kolchak's main armies were selected extremely unsuccessfully. The 28-year-old badly controlled adventurer R. Gaida, with the outlook of an Austrian paramedic, was placed at the head of the Siberian army, more than others contributing to the disruption of the spring offensive by his actions. The Western army was led by General M. V. Khanzhin, an experienced officer, but an artilleryman by profession, despite the fact that the army commander had to solve by no means narrowly technical issues of artillery. The commander of the Separate Orenburg Army, ataman A. I. Dutov, was more of a politician than a commander, so for a significant part of the time in the first half of 1919 he was replaced by the chief of staff, General A. N. Vagin. Other leading positions in the Cossack units were nominated almost exclusively by Cossacks by origin, sometimes despite the professional suitability of the candidate. Admiral Kolchak himself was a naval man and was poorly versed in land tactics and strategy, as a result of which he was forced to rely on his own headquarters, headed by Lebedev, in his decisions.

However, no matter how talented the military leaders may be, they cannot do anything without the troops. And Kolchak had no troops. At least compared to the red ones. The laws of military art are immutable and speak of the need for at least three times superiority over the enemy in order to successfully conduct an offensive. If this condition is not met and there are no reserves for the development of success, the operation will only lead to unnecessary death of people, which happened in the spring and summer of 1919. By the beginning of the offensive, the Whites had only a double superiority in forces, and taking into account non-combatants, and not just combat personnel. The real ratio, most likely, was even less advantageous for them. By April 15, the Western Army, which delivered the main blow, had only 2,686 officers, 36,863 bayonets, 9,242 sabers, 12,547 people in teams and 4,337 artillerymen - a total of 63,039 officers and lower ranks. By June 23, the Siberian army had 56,649 bayonets and 3,980 sabers, a total of 60,629 fighters. By March 29, the Separate Orenburg Army had only 3,185 bayonets and 8,443 checkers, a total of 11,628 fighters. The latter numbered in its ranks almost six times fewer troops (including due to the transfer of all the most valuable non-Cossack units in combat to the Western Army) than its neighbors, whose command also allowed itself to systematically mock the Orenburgers. The size of the Separate Ural Army, according to the intelligence of the Reds, in the summer was about 13,700 bayonets and checkers. In total, at least 135 thousand soldiers and officers of the Kolchak armies took part in the spring offensive (excluding the Urals, who acted virtually autonomously).

The team of the armored train "Sibiryak" on vacation

When the Bolshevik leadership drew attention to the threat from the east, reinforcements were sent to the front, leveling the balance of power by the beginning of May. White, on the other hand, had nothing to put up to reinforce the exhausted units, and their offensive quickly fizzled out. It is no coincidence that Pepelyaev, who commanded the Northern Group of the Siberian Army during the offensive, wrote to his boss Gaida on June 21, 1919: “The Headquarters thoughtlessly sent tens of thousands of people to slaughter.” Blatant errors and disorganization in command and control were obvious even to ordinary officers and soldiers and undermined their faith in command. This is not surprising, given that not even all the corps headquarters knew about the plan of the upcoming offensive. Apart from an unprepared army, the command did not have a well-thought-out plan of operation, and strategic planning itself was at an infant level. What is the farce of the meeting of the army commanders, their chiefs of staff and Admiral Kolchak on February 11, 1919 in Chelyabinsk, when the fundamental issue of an offensive was being decided! Lebedev, who did not come to the meeting, had long since accepted his own plan, which the admiral was supposed to force to accept all the commanders of the armies, the same had their own plans of action and were guided by them without proper coordination with their neighbors. When failures began on the front of the Western Army, Gaida, instead of providing immediate support, openly rejoiced at the failure of his neighbor on the left. Very soon, the Reds transferred part of the troops liberated during the defeat of Khanzhin's army against Gaida, who repeated the sad fate of the ridiculed. Until now, the question of the direction of White's main attack is not completely clear. In the spring of 1919, it could be delivered in two directions: 1) Kazan - Vyatka - Kotlas to connect with the troops of the Northern Front of General E.K. Miller and the allies, and 2) Samara (Saratov) - Tsaritsyn to connect with Denikin's troops. The concentration of significant forces in the Western Army and operational correspondence, as well as the simplest logic, testify in favor of the main attack in the center of the front - along the line of the Samara-Zlatoust railway in the most promising Ufa direction, which made it possible to reach Denikin by the shortest route.

However, it was not possible to concentrate all forces in the Western Army and coordinate the offensive with neighboring army formations. The right-flank Siberian army was almost as powerful in its composition as the Western one, and its actions were largely connected precisely with the northern direction of the attack on Arkhangelsk. A supporter of this path was the army commander Gaida himself, who did not hide his views on this matter even from civilians. White commanders recalled that one or two divisions could always be taken from the Siberian army, and Gaida's attempts, instead of supporting the neighbor on the left, with attacks on Sarapul and Kazan, to act independently in the northern direction were a serious strategic mistake that affected the outcome of the operation. The Soviet commander in chief Vatsetis also drew attention to this mistake of the enemy in his unpublished memoirs. It is no coincidence that even on February 14, before the start of the offensive, Denikin wrote to Kolchak: “It is a pity that the main forces of the Siberian troops, apparently, are directed to the north. A joint operation on Saratov would have given enormous advantages: the liberation of the Ural and Orenburg regions, the isolation of Astrakhan and Turkestan. And most importantly, the possibility of a direct, direct connection between the East and the South, which would lead to the complete unification of all the healthy forces of Russia and to state work on an all-Russian scale. White strategists described in detail the advantages of the southern option, noting the importance of creating a common front with Denikin, the liberation of the Cossack regions and other territories with an anti-Bolshevik population (German colonists, Volga peasants), the capture of grain areas and areas of coal and oil production, as well as the Volga, which allowed transport these resources. Of course, at the same time, Kolchak’s communications inevitably stretched, which could lead to failure before connecting with Denikin, but the army went into a more developed area with a denser railway network, besides, the front was reduced and reserves were released. However, the matter never came to coordination with the south, since the offensives of the two white fronts developed in antiphase. Denikin's major successes began after Kolchak's offensive had bogged down.

Vatsetis recalled: “The subject of action for all the counter-revolutionary fronts was Moscow, where they all rushed in different ways. Did Kolchak, Denikin, Miller have a general plan of action? Hardly. We know that the draft of the general plan was put forward by Denikin and Kolchak, but it was not carried out by either one or the other, each acted in his own way. If we talk about the choice between the “northern” and “southern” options, then the statement of the General Staff of Lieutenant General D. V. Filatiev, who later served in Kolchak’s Headquarters, is closest to reality: “There was another, third option, in addition to the two indicated: move simultaneously to Vyatka and Samara. It led to the eccentric movement of the armies, the actions in pieces and to the exposure of the front in the interval between the armies. Such a course of action could be afforded by a commander who is confident in himself and in his troops and who has superior forces, a strategic reserve and a widely developed network of railways for the transfer of troops along the front and in depth. In this case, one of the directions is chosen as the main one, while the others are the essence of the demonstration to mislead the enemy. None of these conditions were present in the Siberian army, except for the commander's self-confidence, so this option had to be discarded without discussion, as leading inexorably to complete failure. Meanwhile, it was he who was chosen to crush the Bolsheviks, which led the Siberian armies to collapse in the end. The position of the Bolsheviks in the spring of 1919 was such that only a miracle could save them. It happened in the form of the adoption in Siberia of the most absurd plan for action. In fact, due to the erroneous decision of the Headquarters, the white offensive, already poorly prepared and few in number, turned into a blow with outstretched fingers. It did not work out not only coordination with Denikin, but even effective interaction between the Kolchak armies themselves. Even in the first days of the offensive, Headquarters Khanzhin drew attention to this, who telegraphed to Omsk on March 2: “The Western army, inflicting the main blow, has the right to count not only on the full connection with its actions of the operations of neighboring armies, but also on their full support, even sacrificing the private interests of these armies in favor of the main attack ... The Siberian army drew up its plan of action and yesterday proceeded to implement it without taking the initial position indicated to it - so far the left-flank section of this army from the Sarapul-Krasnoufimsk railway to the demarcation line with the Western Army is not occupied by the troops of the Siberian army, and I have to cover this gap in the front with one and a half regiments of my Ufa corps, diverting these forces for an indefinite time from fulfilling the task assigned to the corps. The Orenburg army is in the same state complete decomposition Cossack units, as was the case near Orenburg; decomposition threatens to spread to the infantry units attached to this army ... It is clear that such an army not only will not fulfill the tasks assigned to it by the general directive of the Headquarters, it is not only not capable [of] attacking, but it does not even have the strength to hold the front and stop spontaneous withdrawal and exposure of the flank and rear of the shock army ... "

Khanzhin's chief of staff, General Shchepikhin, wrote about the Orenburg army that, "essentially, Dutov with his pseudo-army is a soap bubble and the left flank of the Western army is in weight." But how much better was the situation in the Western Army itself, where Shchepikhin served? In fact, this army, despite the pulling in of all kinds of replenishment, experienced problems common to all three white armies. On August 4, 1919, Lieutenant-General A.P. Budberg, Assistant Chief of Staff of the Headquarters of the General Staff, wrote in his diary: “Now our situation is much worse than it was a year ago, because we have already liquidated our army, and instead of last year’s Soviets and vinaigrette from the Red Army rags, the regular Red Army is advancing, not wanting - contrary to all the reports of our intelligence - to fall apart; on the contrary, it drives us to the east, and we have lost the ability to resist and almost without a fight we roll and roll. The composition of the Kolchak troops left much to be desired. The situation was catastrophic not only with the highest command staff and military talents. There was an acute shortage of officers at the middle and junior levels. Regular officers were generally rare. In the Western Army of 63,000 by mid-April there were only 138 career officers and 2548 wartime officers. According to some reports, by the beginning of 1919, the shortage of officers at Kolchak reached 10 thousand people. The rear, on the contrary, was full of officers. The harsh attitude towards former officers who had previously served with the Reds and were captured by the Whites did not help to improve the situation. The year 1917 decomposed both the soldier and the officer. During the years of the Civil War, disrespect for elders began to appear among the officers, card games and other entertainments, drunkenness (possibly due to hopelessness) and even looting spread. For example, in the order on the Eastern Front No. 85 of September 8, 1919, it was said that the commander of the 6th Orenburg Cossack regiment, military foreman A.A.

In the White East, there was practically not a single division chief, corps commander, army commander (for example, Gaida, Pepelyaev, Dutov), ​​not to mention atamans who would not commit disciplinary offenses in the conditions of the Civil War. Senior leaders set a bad example for everyone else. There was no absolute value of the order. In fact, any significant military leader in the new conditions was a kind of chieftain. The interests of their unit, detachment, division, corps, army, troops were placed above orders from above, which were executed only as needed. Such an "ataman" for his subordinates was both a king and a god. They were ready to follow him anywhere. As a contemporary noted, “in the conditions of the Civil War there is no “stability of parts”, but everything is based only on the “stability of individual leaders”. Military discipline, as well as interaction, were absent as such. The Reds had a completely different discipline. In laying the blame for the revolution and the Civil War on the Bolsheviks, we must not forget that the losing side is no less, and perhaps even more, responsible for all the consequences of this. The complete disorganization of their own military administration and the impressive successes of the enemy led to the loss of faith in victory in the ranks of the Whites. Disappointment can be most clearly seen in the statements commanders. Major General L. N. Domozhirov, who was at the disposal of the military headquarters of the Orenburg Cossack army, speaking in the spring of 1919 at a stanitsa gathering in the village of Kizilskaya, spoke to the Cossacks about the aimlessness of the fight against the Reds. “I feel that my faith in the success of our holy cause is being undermined,” General R. K. Bangersky noted in early May. The commander of the II Orenburg Cossack Corps of the General Staff, Major General I. G. Akulinin, in a report to the army commander dated April 25, directly wrote about the lack of "particularly cordial attitude on the part of" native villagers "to the Cossack units". On May 2, when Kolchak's defeat was not yet obvious, Commander Khanzhin imposed a resolution on one of the documents: "Our cavalry must follow the example of the Red Army."

Such confessions of generals are worth a lot. Kolchak's army suffered from an incorrect distribution of forces and resources along the front: it experienced an acute shortage of infantry units on the Cossack fronts (which, for example, made it impossible to take such an important center as Orenburg with the forces of cavalry alone) and at the same time, there was a lack of cavalry on non-Cossack fronts. Only centralized control could lead the whites to victory, but the Cossack regions remained autonomous, and Cossack atamans continued to pursue their own political line. In addition to tactical and strategic problems, this added moral and psychological inconvenience. Soldiers and Cossacks, fighting on their native lands, experienced a strong temptation at the first opportunity to go home or go to the enemy if their native village or village was behind the front line (by the way, the Bolsheviks understood this and tried to prevent this). After the liberation from the red Izhevsk and Votkinsk factories, even the legendary Izhevsk and Votkinsk residents, the only white parts of the workers, wanted to go home. During the period of the most difficult battles at the end of April, when the fate of the White Cause in the east was being decided, most of these “heroes” of the struggle against the Bolsheviks simply went home (it must be said that Khanzhin himself imprudently promised them to “return to their families” earlier). By May, only 452 bayonets from the previous composition remained in the Izhevsk brigade, the reinforcements that arrived were poorly trained and surrendered. On May 10, Gaida had to disband the soldiers of the Votkinsk division to their homes. The Cossacks did not want to go beyond their territory at all, putting local interests higher. As practice has shown, the Cossacks could only allocate part of their forces for the nationwide struggle against the Reds, and also provide their territory as a base for the White movement. Before the creation of the mass Red Army, this feature of the Cossacks gave the Whites an undeniable advantage over the enemy. However, the Whites' lack of an effective repressive apparatus did not allow the leaders of the White movement to quickly form mass armies (with the help of terror) and ultimately doomed them to defeat. The forces mobilized by Kolchak were heterogeneous in composition. In many respects, Vatsetis' assessment is fair: “Kolchak turned out to have a rather heterogeneous front, both in terms of its political orientation and along the line of social grouping. The right flank is the army of Gen. Gaida consisted mainly of Siberian democracy, supporters of Siberian autonomy. The center - the Ufa front was composed of kulak-capitalist elements and along the political line kept the Great Russian-Cossack direction.

The left flank - the Cossacks of the Orenburg and Ural Regions declared themselves constitutionalists. So it was at the front. As for the rear from the Urals to Baikal, the remnants of the left wing of the former Czecho-Russian military bloc were grouped there: Czech troops and Social Revolutionaries, who opened hostile actions against the dictatorship of the Supreme Board of Admiral Kolchak. Of course, with such a heterogeneous composition, the fighting spirit of the Kolchak troops left much to be desired. Shchepikhin, Pepelyaev and others noted the indifference of the population to the cause of the revival of Russia, which also influenced the morale of the troops. According to Pepelyaev, “the moment has come when you don’t know what will happen tomorrow, whether the units will surrender entirely. There must be some kind of turning point, a new explosion of patriotism, without which we will all perish. But the miracle didn't happen. The morale of the troops also depends on whether there are reserves available that allow you to change units on the front line and give the soldiers rest; it also depends on how the soldier is dressed, shod, fed and provided with everything necessary. The problem of having reserves was one of the most painful for whites. In fact, the offensive of Kolchak, as well as Denikin, began and developed in the almost complete absence of any reserves, which could not but lead to disaster. The calculations of the white strategists were apparently based on the gradual compression of the ring around Soviet Russia and the reduction due to this of their own front line. At the same time, new territories were liberated, in which it was possible to mobilize reinforcements, and their own troops were released. However, to begin with, it was necessary at least to reach the Volga line and gain a foothold on it, which the Kolchakites did not succeed in doing. The operation began on the eve of the spring thaw, and very soon the small units of the whites found themselves cut off from their rear for several weeks (this happened both in the Western and in the Separate Orenburg armies), which had not been established before, and now were completely absent. Frunze rightly believed that the mudslide would have to become an ally of the Reds.

And indeed, as a result of the flooding of the rivers, not only artillery and carts could not move forward, but even the infantry, which at first was forced to use “matinees” (morning frosts), and with warming there were cases when horsemen drowned along with horses. Parts of the corps due to the flood of the rivers were separated, could not act in a coordinated manner, lost contact with each other. If the Reds retreated to their base, where they could quickly recover, then the White troops, rushing at full speed to the Volga to get ahead of the mudslide, at the most crucial moment were deprived of food, clothing, ammunition, artillery and were severely overworked. Such a situation, for example, developed in April 1919 in the Western Army. General N. T. Sukin asked the command about what to do - to continue the offensive on Buzuluk and sacrifice infantry, or to wait out the mudslide, pull up the carts and artillery and put the troops in order. According to Sukin, "to go ... to the Volga with weak forces, weak, thinned parts - this is tantamount to the failure of the whole thing." In fact, the case failed long before reaching the Volga. It was not possible to get ahead of the onset of the thaw, and the Whites bogged down. A stop in the conditions of a maneuverable Civil War was almost always a harbinger of retreat and defeat. “Stopping is death in a civil war,” wrote General Shchepikhin. The Reds, taking advantage of a temporary respite, pulled up reserves, took the initiative in their own hands, transferred reinforcements to threatened sectors and thus did not allow the Whites to achieve a decisive victory anywhere. The Whites never received much-needed reserves. It was the thaw that allowed the Reds to recover and launch a counterattack from the Buzuluk - Sorochinskaya - Mikhailovskoye (Sharlyk) area with the forces of the Southern Group of the Eastern Front. The preparing blow of the Reds, although it became known in advance, there was nothing to fend off (a similar situation occurred with Denikin in the fall of 1919).

The Whites were not even able to reach Buzuluk, which was ordered to be taken by April 26 and intercept the Tashkent railway in order to block the connection between Orenburg and the Soviet center. Due to the lack of accurate intelligence, it was not clear where to move the Southern Group of the Western Army - with a fist to Orenburg or Buzuluk, or to keep it between these points. As a result, the third, disastrous option was chosen. Pepelyaev wrote about the Siberian Army: “The regiments are melting away and there is nothing to replenish them ... We have to mobilize the population of the occupied areas, act independently of any general state plan, risking getting the nickname “atamanism” for our work. We have to create improvised personnel units, weakening the combat units. Shchepikhin noted that there were no reserves behind the front of the Western Army: "... further east to Omsk itself, even with a rolling ball, not a single regiment and there is little chance of getting anything in the coming months." Meanwhile, the offensive had exhausted the units. In one of the best regiments of the 5th Sterlitamak Army Corps, Beloretsk, up to 200 bayonets remained by the beginning of May. In the regiments of the 6th Ural Corps, by mid-April, there were 400-800 bayonets, of which up to half could not operate due to the lack of boots, some put on bast shoes, there were no clothes even for replenishment. The situation was even worse for the Ural Cossacks, in whose regiments there were 200 people each, there was an elective principle and extremely weak discipline. Budberg already noted in his diary on May 2 that the White offensive had bogged down, and the front had been broken through by the Reds in a very dangerous place: “I consider the situation very alarming; it is clear to me that the troops were exhausted and disheveled during the continuous offensive - the flight to the Volga, they lost their stability and the ability of stubborn resistance (generally very weak in improvised troops) ... The transition of the Reds to active operations is very unpleasant, since the Stavka has no ready and combat-ready reserves …

The Stavka has no action plan; they flew to the Volga, waited for the occupation of Kazan, Samara and Tsaritsyn, but they didn’t think about what would have to be done in case of other prospects ... There were no Reds - they were chasing them; the Reds appeared - we begin to brush them off like an annoying fly, just like we brushed aside the Germans in 1914-1917 ... The front is scary, unreasonably stretched, the troops are exhausted, there are no reserves, and the troops and their commanders are tactically very poorly trained, they can only they are incapable of fighting and pursuing, they are incapable of maneuvering ... The cruel conditions of the Civil War make the troops sensitive to detours and encirclement, because behind this there are torments and shameful death from the red beasts. Reds in the military are also illiterate; their plans are very naive and immediately visible ... But they have plans, but we don’t have those ... ”The transfer of the strategic reserve of the Headquarters - the 1st Volga Corps of Kappel - to the Western Army and its introduction into battle in parts turned out to be a serious miscalculation of the command. As part of the Separate Orenburg Army, Kappel's corps could change the situation, but Dutov's army at the decisive moment turned out to be left to its own fate by the actions of the Headquarters. At the same time, Kappel's corps was sent to the front in its raw form, partially transferred to the enemy (in particular, the 10th Bugulma Regiment transferred almost in full force, there were cases of transfers in other regiments), and the rest was used to plug holes in front of the Western Army alone. According to the British military mission, about 10 thousand people went from Kappel's corps to the Reds, although this figure seems to be greatly inflated. Another reserve - the Consolidated Cossack Corps - also did not play a big role in the operation. As part of the Siberian Army, the Consolidated Shock Siberian Corps, which was formed from February-March 1919, was as a reserve. The corps was brought into battle on May 27 to cover the gap between the Western and Siberian armies, but in just two days of hostilities it lost half of its composition, primarily due to those who surrendered, and did not show itself in further battles. The reasons for the failure of the corps are both obvious and incredible: the troops were sent into battle without cohesion and proper training, most of the regimental, battalion and company commanders received their appointments only on the eve or during the advancement of the corps to the front, and the division chiefs - even after the defeat of the corps. The connection was sent to the front line without telephones, field kitchens, wagon trains, and not even fully armed. There were no other major reserves in Gaida's army.

Why didn't the Whites provide even such modest replenishments with everything necessary? The fact is that the issues of material support have become the bottleneck of the Kolchak military machine. The only Trans-Siberian railway line passed through the whole of Siberia, the capacity of which largely depended on the fate of the offensive. It must be said that the railway in 1919 worked very badly and the supply was extremely irregular. As a result, the troops had to carry everything they needed with them, and in extreme cases, switch to self-supply, which bordered on looting, embittered the local population and decomposed the troops. It was especially difficult in those areas where there was no railway and it was necessary to provide transportation by horse-drawn transport. This applied to the entire left flank of White.

Kolchakites during the retreat in October 1919

It should be noted that the “psychic” attacks of whites, famous from the film “Chapaev”, without a single shot being fired, were not undertaken at all from a good life and not just to impress the enemy. One of the main reasons for such actions was the lack of white ammunition, which had little to do with psychology. General P. A. Belov wrote to Khanzhin: “The main reason for the decline in the spirit of my units, according to the general opinion of the commanders, is that they have not been supplied with cartridges for a long time. Now there are thirty to forty rounds per rifle left in units, and ten thousand in my stock for the whole group. In March 1919, the Izhevsk defenders were issued only two clips of cartridges each. Leaving the Volga region in the fall of 1918, the Whites lost their military factories and warehouses there (Kazan - powder and artillery warehouses; Simbirsk - two cartridge factories; Ivashchenkovo ​​- an explosives factory, a capsule factory, artillery warehouses, stocks of explosives for 2 million shells; Samara - pipe factory, gunpowder factory, workshops). There were military factories in the Urals in Izhevsk and Zlatoust, but there were no weapons factories in Siberia at all. The whites were armed with a wide variety of systems - rifles of the Mosin, Berdan, Arisak, Gra, Waterly systems, machine guns of Maxim, Colt, Hotchkiss, Lewis. Rifles of foreign systems were sometimes no less common than Russian ones. Such diversity made it difficult to provide the army with the appropriate ammunition. So, in the Western Army there were no Russian rifles, and there were no cartridges for the available Japanese ones. The situation was no better with machine guns and guns. By April 15, the Western Army had 229 Maxim machine guns, 137 Lewis, 249 Colts, 52 other systems, a total of 667. In 44 batteries there were 85 three-inch guns, two 42-line guns, eight - 48- linear, seven - other systems and one bomber. The Separate Orenburg Army lacked guns and machine guns.

In all armies, there was a shortage of communications equipment, vehicles, and armored vehicles. Due to poor communications, for example, the coordinated offensive of the White Corps on Orenburg in early May was actually thwarted. As of May 28, up to 300 military telegrams could not reach Orsk (headquarters of the disbanded Separate Orenburg Army) from Ufa (headquarters of the Western Army). The reasons were not only in the imperfection and lack of technology, but also in frequent sabotage when it was impossible to restore order in the rear. The army did not have enough gasoline. In the midst of the spring offensive of 1919, the pilots of the Western Army were instructed to "have an insignificant amount of gasoline available [in] air squadrons ... to save for air work when crossing the Volga". And what is the appearance of a simple Kolchak soldier! Some of the few photographs depict a horrific picture. Even worse is what is known from the documents. In parts of the Northern Group of the Siberian Army, "people are barefoot and naked, they walk in Armenians and bast shoes ... Mounted scouts, like the Scythians of the twentieth century, ride without saddles." In the 5th Syzran Rifle Regiment of the Southern Group of the Western Army, "the shoes of the majority fell apart, they walked knee-deep in mud." In the 2nd Ufa Army Corps of the Western Army, reinforcements arrived without uniforms directly from military commanders and were sent into battle. Instead of overcoats, Orenburg Cossacks wore Chinese wadded jackets, from which, when warming, many fighters pulled out cotton wool, and after an unexpected onset of cold weather, they began to freeze and get sick. “You had to see with your own eyes to believe what the army was wearing ... Most in torn coats, sometimes dressed right almost on their naked bodies; there are holey felt boots on my feet, which, in the spring thaw and mud, were only an extra burden ... A complete lack of linen. In May, Kolchak, who arrived at the front line, “expressed a desire to see units of the 6th Ural Corps ... he was shown units of the 12th Ural Division being withdrawn to the rear. Their appearance was terrible. Part without shoes, part in outerwear on a naked body, most without overcoats. We had a great ceremonial march. The supreme ruler was terribly upset by the sight ... ".

This picture does not fit with the data on the multimillion-dollar deliveries of the allies to Kolchak, including two million pairs of shoes and full uniforms for 360 thousand people, not to mention hundreds of thousands of shells, rifles, hundreds of millions of cartridges, thousands of machine guns. If all this was delivered to Vladivostok, then it never reached the front. Hunger, fatigue from incessant marches and battles, the lack of normal clothing created fertile ground for Bolshevik agitation, and more often, in addition to it, led to unrest in the troops, the killing of officers, and defections to the side of the enemy. The mobilized peasants fought reluctantly, quickly scattered, went over to the enemy, taking their weapons with them and opening fire on their recent comrades. There were cases of mass surrender. The riot in the 1st Ukrainian Taras Shevchenko kuren on May 1–2 was the most famous, during which about 60 officers were killed, and up to 3,000 armed soldiers with 11 machine guns and 2 guns went over to the side of the Reds. Later, the 11th Sengileevsky Regiment, the 3rd Battalion of the 49th Kazan Regiment and other units crossed over to the side of the enemy. Similar but smaller cases occurred in the Southern Group of the Western Army, the Siberian and Separate Orenburg armies. In June 1919, two battalions of the 21st Chelyabinsk mountain rifle regiment went over to the Reds, having killed the officers, and at the end of the month near Perm, the 3rd Dobryansky and 4th Solikamsk regiments surrendered without a fight. In total, during the counteroffensive, until the end of the Ufa operation, about 25,500 people were taken prisoner by the Reds. With the inability of the command to create elementary conditions for the troops, the result of the Kolchak offensive is not surprising. On May 2, the head of the 12th Ural Rifle Division of the General Staff, Major General R.K. Since the time of Ufa (we are talking about the capture of the city on March 13. - A. G.), we have not received bread, but eat whatever. The division is currently incapacitated. We need to give people at least two nights of sleep and come to their senses, otherwise there will be a big collapse.

At the same time, Bangersky noted that he did not see in the old army such heroism as was shown by the Whites during the Ufa and Sterlitamak operations, but there is a limit to everything. “I would like to know in the name of what higher considerations the 12th division was sacrificed?” asked the major general. But it was not only the division of Bangersky who donated, but the entire Kolchak army. The Orenburg Cossacks in the Western Army did not have fodder, the horses suffered from starvation, constant transitions and barely walked. Such a deplorable state of the horse composition deprived him of an important advantage - speed and surprise. The white cavalry, according to the participant in the battles, could not be compared with the red, whose horses were in excellent condition and, as a result, had high mobility. The commander of the 6th Ural Army Corps, Sukin, wrote to Khanzhin on May 3: “Continuous marches along incredibly difficult roads, without days off and daily battles of the last two weeks without rest, without convoys, hunger, lack of uniforms (many people are literally barefoot ... without overcoats) - that’s causes that can completely destroy the young cadres of divisions, people stagger from fatigue and from sleepless nights, and their combat elasticity is finally broken. I ask you to take the divisions to the reserve to put them in order. It was General Sukin, driven to despair by the current situation, who did not hesitate to put up a barefoot guard of honor in front of the arrival in Ufa shortly after Kolchak took it. Sukin wrote in despair: “There is not even bread.”

Pepelyaev noted that "the area of ​​​​military operations has been eaten to the ground, the rear is infinitely rich, but the transport is such that it is impossible to fight with it, in its current position." According to General Bangersky, “the capture of Ufa made it possible to form a strong rear, replenish the mobilized troops, supply a convoy, and now, in early May, launch an offensive with large forces, pulling up the corps ... Kappel and forming more new troops.” But this was not done ... The crown of the monstrous state of the Kolchak military machine was the rear, which was controlled very weakly by the Whites. Captain G. Dumbadze, who was sent to Krasnoyarsk, one of the major centers of Siberia, after completing an accelerated course at the Academy of the General Staff, recalled: “Arriving in Krasnoyarsk, for the first time I saw the fiery flames of partisanism that engulfed the entire province. Walking the streets of Krasnoyarsk was fraught with great risk. Gangs of Reds and individual Bolsheviks under the guise of government soldiers killed officers, taking advantage of the cover of night. No one was sure if he had been stopped for identity checks by a real legitimate patrol or by red terrorists in disguise. Burning of warehouses and shops, cutting of telephone wires and many other types of sabotage took place literally every day. The lights in the houses were not turned on or the windows were hung with dark matter, otherwise a hand grenade was thrown into the light into the apartments. I remember walking the streets at night with a loaded Browning in my pocket. All this was literally in the heart of White Siberia. The entire Yenisei province and part of Irkutsk were covered by a partisan movement, which chained significant White forces to itself. In May 1919, the partisans systematically and daily dismantled the tracks (sometimes at a considerable distance), which led to long disruptions to the movement of trains on the Trans-Siberian (for example, on the night of May 8, as a result of sabotage, the railway communication was interrupted for two weeks), burned bridges, shelled trains, cut telegraph wires, terrorized railroad workers. For every 10 days, by the beginning of June, there were 11 crashes; as a result, more than 140 trains with ammunition and supplies accumulated east of Krasnoyarsk, which would not be superfluous at all at the front.

Dumbadze wrote: “There is no exact measure for determining the terrible moral, political and material damage caused to us by partisans. I will always be of my opinion that the affairs in the Yenisei province were a knife in the back of the Siberian army. The Soviet general Ogorodnikov… says that the Whites lost in Siberia without any strategic defeats from the Red Army, and the reason for their death was in the unrest in the rear. Having experience in this armed rear, I cannot but agree with what Ogorodnikov says. The uprisings covered the counties of the Turgai and Akmola regions, Altai and Tomsk province. Thousands of soldiers were used in their suppression, who under other circumstances could be sent to the front. In addition, the participation of tens of thousands of combat-ready men in the partisan movement in itself clearly testified to the failure of Kolchak's mobilization in Siberia. We add that because of the atamanism, the front did not receive reinforcements from the Far East, which, perhaps, could turn the tide. An analysis of the internal state of Kolchak's armies clearly shows the complete impossibility of successfully implementing the plans of the white command. The Reds, having successfully launched the flywheel of mass mobilization, had an almost constant superiority in forces and means. During 1919, the average monthly increase in the number of the Red Army was 183 thousand people, which exceeded the total number of troops that the Whites had on the Eastern Front. By April 1, when the Whites still hoped for success, the Red Army already had one and a half million fighters, and their numbers were constantly increasing. The number of troops of all the opponents of the Reds, taken together, could not be compared with this figure. At the same time, the advantage that the Whites had before the creation of the mass Red Army in quality personnel was quickly lost. The number of Red troops, and in many cases their quality, increased rapidly; the quality of the white troops, with relatively little change in numbers, was constantly falling. Besides, central position The Reds allowed them not only to take advantage of the reserves of the old army and the resources of the industrial center, but also to operate along internal lines of operations, crushing the enemy one by one. The Whites, on the contrary, acted in isolation, attempts to coordinate their actions turned out to be belated. Due to the vastness of the theater of war, they were unable to take advantage of the advantages they had, for example, the presence of trained Cossack cavalry.

The mistakes of some Kolchak generals, who made a dizzying career during the Civil War, but did not have time to gain the necessary experience, also affected. The mobilization resource of the white-controlled areas was not fully used, a huge mass of peasants joined the rebels in the white rear or simply evaded mobilization. There were no prepared reserves. The army did not have an equipped rear base and military industry, the supply was irregular. The result was a constant shortage of weapons and ammunition, communications and equipment among the troops. The Whites could not oppose anything to the most powerful Bolshevik agitation in their troops. The rank-and-file mass had a rather low level of political consciousness, and was tired of the many years of war. There was no unity in the Kolchak camp due to sharp internal contradictions, and not only on political issues between the monarchists, the Cadets and the Social Revolutionaries. On the outskirts, controlled by the whites, the national question was acute. Historically, there were difficult relations between the Cossack and non-Cossack population, the Russian population with the Bashkir and Kazakh. The white leadership pursued a fairly soft political course, and harsh measures often could not be implemented due to the lack of mechanisms for implementing orders on the ground and monitoring their execution. Despite the brutal red terror, the persecution of the church, which embittered the peasants' land policy, the whites could not become the force that would bring order and become attractive to the masses. With the end of the First World War, the Bolsheviks lost the appearance of traitors, which was attached to them after the Brest Peace. The Whites, on the contrary, now found themselves in the role of accomplices of the interventionists. The leaders of the White movement, unlike their opponent, did not understand the complexity of the task before them, did not realize the need for the most stringent measures to achieve victory.

No matter how much they talk about white terror, it is obvious that the white leaders - people born of the old regime - could not imagine the scale of violence that was necessary in 1917-1922 for the successful implementation of their plans. The Bolsheviks, hardened by years of illegal struggle, had such an idea. However, their methods of influence were not limited to terror alone, making up a cruel, but at the same time effective system of government. The Bolshevik leaders were able to comprehend the principles of warfare in the new conditions, combining war and politics, which Clausewitz wrote about and which the Whites did not succeed in. It was the creation of a mass Red Army under the leadership of qualified officers of the old army, controlled by the commissars, as well as the promotion of slogans understandable and attractive to most, that brought victory to the Bolsheviks. White had his advantages, but they could not use them effectively. In the end, the red organization defeated the white improvisation.

Notes

1. GA RF. F. R-6605. Op. 1. D. 8. L. 78.
2. RGVA. F. 39624. Op. 1. D. 27. L. 84.
3. GA RF. F. R-952. Op. 3. D. 28. L. 2.
4. Ibid. F. R-5960. Op. 1. D. 8a. L. 89.
5. Ibid. F. R-6605. Op. 1. D. 7. L. 3 rev.
6. RGVA. F. 39348. Op. 1. D. 1. L. 752.
7. Ibid. F. 39624. Op. 1. D. 87. L. 11v.– 12.
8. Battle schedules of the armies of the Eastern Front. 1918–1919 Pub. A. A. Karevsky and R. G. Gagkuev // White movement in the East of Russia. white guard. Historical almanac. 2001. No. 5. S. 148.
9. RGVA. F. 39624. Op. 1. D. 13. L. 68–69.
10. "Russia will perish in the waves of a new anarchy." Pub. N. D. Egorova and N. V. Pulchenko // Military History Journal. 1996. No. 6. S. 80.
11. See, for example: Petrov P.P. From the Volga to Pacific Ocean in the ranks of the Whites (1918–1922). Riga. 1930, pp. 75–76.
12. GA RF. F. R-6605. Op. 1. D. 8. L. 78v; Petrov P.P. Decree. op. S. 76.
13. Budberg A.P. Diary//Archive of the Russian Revolution. T. 14. Berlin. 1924. S. 235.
14. RGVA. F. 39624. Op. 1. D. 28. L. 10.
15. See also: Plotnikov I.F. Chelyabinsk: development of a strategic plan for the offensive of the Russian army by A.V. Kolchak, successes in its implementation and subsequent failure (February-May 1919) / / Ural in the events of 1917-1921. : actual problems study. Chelyabinsk. 1999, pp. 79–83.
16. Volkov E. V. The fate of the Kolchak general. Pages of the life of M. V. Khanzhin. Yekaterinburg. 1999, p. 128.
17. Gins GK Siberia, allies and Kolchak. M. 2007. S. 393.
18. Molchanov V. Struggle in the East of Russia and in Siberia//Eastern Front of Admiral Kolchak. M. 2004. S. 423.
19. RGVA. F. 39348. Op. 1. D. 1. L. 746.
20. GA RF. F. R-6219. Op. 1. D. 47. L. 1v.–2.
21. Boldyrev V. G. Directory. Kolchak. Interventions. Memories (From the cycle "Six Years" 1917-1922). Ed. B. D. Wegman. Novonikolaevsk. 1925. C. 60; Budberg A.P. Diary//Archive of the Russian Revolution. T. 14. Berlin 1924. S. 241; Golovin N. N. Russian counter-revolution. Part 4. Book. 8. B. M. 1937. S. 114.
22. RGVA. F. 39348. Op. 1. D. 1. L. 820.
23. Filatiev D. V. Catastrophe of the White movement in Siberia 1918–1922. eyewitness impressions. Paris. 1985, pp. 53–54.
24. 24. RGVA. F. 39624. Op. 1. D. 11. L. 31–31 rev.
25. GA RF. F. R-6605. Op. 1. D. 8. L. 66v.
26. Budberg A.P. Diary//Archive of the Russian Revolution. T. 15. Berlin. 1924, pp. 256–257.
27. RGVA. F. 39624. Op. 1. D. 87. L. 11v.–12.
28. Eikhe G. H. Overturned rear. M. 1966. S. 148.
29. RGVA. F. 39483. Op. 1. D. 57. L. 59.
30. Sulavko A. V. Etudes on tactics in the Civil War. Nikolsk-Ussuriysky. 1921. S. 19.
31. State Archive Orenburg region (SAOO). F. R-1912. Op. 2. D. 32. L. 30.
32. RGVA. F. 39624. Op. 1. D. 69. L. 66.
33. Civil war in the Orenburg region 1917–1919 Documents and materials. Orenburg. 1958, p. 308.
34. RGVA. F. 39624. Op. 1. D. 69. L. 53.
35. Plotnikov I. F. The Civil War in the Urals (1917–1922). Encyclopedia and bibliography. T. 1. Yekaterinburg. 2007, pp. 149–150. In the future, the situation with the discipline of the Izhevsk and Votkinsk residents did not get better - for more details, see: Why did the Whites lose?! Appeal of officers and soldiers of Izhevsk and Votkinsk residents about their unauthorized abandonment of the ranks of the army in 1919. Publ. A. V. Ganina//White business. M. 2005. S. 239–242.
36. Konstantinov S. I. Armed formations of the anti-Bolshevik governments of the Volga region, the Urals and Siberia in the years civil war. Yekaterinburg. 1997, p. 165.
37. RGVA. F. 39348. Op. 1. D. 1. L. 817.
38. "Russia will perish in the waves of a new anarchy." S. 82.
39. Sirotinsky S. A. The Way of Arseny. M. 1959. S. 140.
40. For more details, see: Ganin A.V. Chernogorets in the Russian service: General Bakich. M. 2004. S. 73–75.
41. RGVA. F. 39624. Op. 1. D. 69. L. 109 rev.
42. Ibid. D. 27. L. 81.
43. GA RF. F. R-6605. Op. 1. D. 8. L. 98.
44. Petrov P. P. Decree. op. pp. 80–81.
45. RGVA. F. 39624. Op. 1. D. 69. L. 126.
46. ​​"Russia will perish in the waves of a new anarchy." S. 81.
47. GA RF. F. R-6605. Op. 1. D. 8. L. 71v.
48. RGVA. F. 39624. Op. 1. D. 69. L. 68.
49. Ibid. L. 109 about.
50. Ibid. L. 184.
51. Budberg A.P. Diary//Archive of the Russian Revolution. T. 14. Berlin. 1924, pp. 228–229.
52. Eikhe G. Kh. Ufa adventure of Kolchak. M. 1960. S. 218.
53. Smele J. Civil war in Siberia: the anti-Bolshevik government of Admiral Kolchak, 1918–1920. Cambridge. 1996. P. 320.
54. Simonov D. G. To the Consolidated Siberian Shock Corps of the Army of Admiral A. V. Kolchak (1919) / / Siberia during the Civil War. Kemerovo. 2007, pp. 55–57.
55. RGVA. F. 39624. Op. 1. D. 69. L. 68.
56. Efimov A. [G.] Izhevtsy and Votkintsy / / Eastern Front of Admiral Kolchak. M. 2004. S. 436.
57. RGVA. F. 39617. Op. 1. D. 70. L. 156–158v.
58. See, for example: GAOO. F. R-1912. Op. 1. D. 12. L. 4–4 rev.; Op. 2. D. 75. L. 8, 9v., 12.
59. RGVA. F. 39624. Op. 1. D. 69. L. 188.
60. Ibid. D. 87. L. 11v.–12.
61. Ibid. D. 186. L. 460.
62. Ibid. D. 11. L. 21.
63. "Russia will perish in the waves of a new anarchy." S. 81.
64. According to the oral recollections of a participant in the battles A.F. Gergenreder - Letter from I.A. Gergenreder to the author dated 01/13/2004.
65. RGVA. F. 39624. Op. 1. D. 69. L. 53.
66. Ibid. F. 39606. Op. 1. D. 24. L. 25.
67. Sakharov K. V. White Siberia (Internal war 1918-1920). Munich. 1923. S. 74.
68. Petrov P. P. Decree. op. S. 88.
69. Spirin L. M. Defeat of Kolchak's army. M. 1957. S. 89–91. See also some excellent data on UK shipments: Pereira N. G. O. White Siberia. The Politics of Civil War. London; buffalo. 1996. P. 105.
70. Plotnikov I. F. The Civil War in the Urals ... T. 2. Yekaterinburg. 2007. S. 144.
71. Shushpanov S. G. Forgotten division// white army. White business. Historical popular science almanac (Yekaterinburg). 1997. No. 4. S. 44.
72. Filimonov B. B. The White Army of Admiral Kolchak. M. 1997. S. 39; Filatiev D.V. Decree. op. S. 79; Lobanov D. A. Permskaya rifle division army of Admiral Kolchak. 1918-1919//White movement in the East of Russia. White Guard. Almanac. 2001. No. 5. P. 91.
73. Kakurin N. E., Vatsetis I. I. Civil war. 1918–1921 SPb. 2002, p. 238.
74. RGVA. F. 39624. Op. 1. D. 69. L. 62v.
75. Ibid. L. 64 about.
76. Vorotovov M.F. 2 Orenburg Cossack Regiment in 1918–1920 (Notes of Colonel Vorotovov)//Hoover Institution Archives. Colonel Vorotovov Collection. Folder VW Russia V954. L. 17.
77. RGVA. F. 39624. Op. 1. D. 69. L. 58–58 rev.
78. GA RF. F. R-6605. Op. 1. D. 8. L. 62; Sakharov K. V. Decree. op. P. 78. General Budberg wrote that the guard was without pants, but this seems less likely - see: Budberg A.P. Diary / / Archive of the Russian Revolution. T. 15. Berlin. 1924. S. 341.
79. RGVA. F. 39624. Op. 1. D. 69. L. 109 rev.
80. "Russia will perish in the waves of a new anarchy." S. 82.
81. RGVA. F. 39624. Op. 1. D. 69. L. 65.
82. Dumbadze G. What contributed to our defeat in Siberia in the Civil War. Pub. A. I. Deryabina//White Guard. 1997. No. 1. S. 43.
83. Eikhe G. Kh. Overturned rear. S. 229; Novikov P. A. Civil war in Eastern Siberia. M. 2005. S. 163.
84. We are talking about the book: Ogorodnikov F. A blow to Kolchak in the spring of 1919. M. 1938.
85. Dumbadze G. Decree. op. S. 45.
86. Calculated according to: Movchin N. Manning the Red Army in 1918–1921//Civil War 1918–1921: In 3 volumes/Under the general. ed. A. S. Bubnov, S. S. Kamenev and R. P. Eideman. T. 2. Military Art of the Red Army. M. 1928. S. 87.

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This desire of Frunze was soon fulfilled. The party and the Soviet government highly appreciated his outstanding military organizational skills. In December 1918, he was appointed commander of the Fourth Army of the Eastern Front.

The Fourth Army fought on the southern sector of the Eastern Front against Kolchak. During this period, Kolchak was the most dangerous enemy Soviet state. Kolchak was helped by all means by the imperialists of the largest states of Europe and America. He was their henchman.

Kolchak carried out a coup in Omsk with the assistance of the British and French and declared himself the "supreme ruler" of Russia in November 1918. “We called this government to life,” said Churchill, the worst enemy of Soviet Russia, the organizer of the intervention, who at that time held the post of Minister of War of England, in his speech in the British Parliament in June 1919. And later, in his memoirs, the same Churchill admitted that Kolchak's armies received one hundred thousand guns from British sources alone and that most of the soldiers were dressed in the uniforms of the British army.

Kolchak was also greatly assisted by the US and Japanese imperialists. British, French, American, Japanese, Czechoslovak, Italian troops were stationed along the Siberian railway under the pretext of "protection".

In essence, as V. I. Lenin pointed out, the entire world bourgeoisie helped Kolchak in one way or another. "Everything that could paralyze the revolution, everything came to the aid of Kolchak."

In terms of the Entente's campaign against the Soviet Republic at the beginning of 1919, Kolchak was given the main role. The Eastern Front of the Red Army was then the main front.

At the end of December 1918, when Frunze was assigned to the southern sector of the Eastern Front, Kolchak in the north, defeating the Third Army, captured Perm and sought to move further to Glazov and Vyatka to join the troops of the whites and interventionists advancing from Arkhangelsk to Vologda and Kotlas . A catastrophic situation has arisen. It threatened the entire Eastern Front.

In view of this, the Central Committee of the Party, at the suggestion of V. I. Lenin, sent I. V. Stalin and F. E. Dzerzhinsky to investigate the reasons for the surrender of Perm and the defeats at the front, as well as to take measures to restore party and Soviet work in the front-line rear . The investigation found that the defeat of the Third Army was the result of the sabotage of the leaders of the army - proteges of Trotsky, who did nothing to strengthen it, despite the direct directives of V. I. Lenin on behalf of the Defense Council.

Having established the causes of the disaster, I.V. Stalin and F.E. Dzerzhinsky personally supervised the implementation of the measures they had planned, as a result of which Soviet and party work in the immediate rear of the army was restored, a turning point was created at the front. The third army launched a counteroffensive.

JV Stalin, in his report to the Central Committee of the Party and V. I. Lenin on the causes of the fall of Perm, put forward a number of important measures for the entire Red Army. “It is necessary,” he wrote in the conclusions of this report, “to establish on the fronts, primarily on the Eastern Front, a regime of strict centralization of the actions of individual armies around the implementation of a certain, seriously considered strategic directive.” In these conclusions, I. V. Stalin also emphasized the need to "put into practice a system of permanent reserves, without which neither the preservation of cash positions nor the development of successes are inconceivable."

The conclusions of the report of I. V. Stalin and F. E. Dzerzhinsky played at that time and in the future a huge role in the restructuring and improvement of the work of the Red Army on the Eastern Front. Frunze was also guided by them.

On January 31, 1919, Mikhail Vasilyevich arrived in Samara, where the headquarters of the Fourth Army was. Here he met with the chairman of the Samara provincial executive committee, Valerian Vladimirovich Kuibyshev, who was also a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Fourth Army.

Kuibyshev acquainted Frunze in detail with a very plight in the Fourth Army in its area of ​​operations. The deepening devastation increasingly undermined the national economy. Kulak sabotage intensified in the villages. Under the influence of counter-revolutionary agitation, outbreaks of peasant uprisings became more frequent. It was also unfavorable in parts of the Fourth Army. Their fighting ability has weakened. Discipline was violated not only by privates, but also by commanders. There were cases of anti-Soviet speeches, which sometimes turned into open rebellions. So, shortly before Frunze's arrival in Samara, two regiments revolted. The leading workers from the Revolutionary Military Council of the Fourth Army, who went there to pacify, almost all died at the hands of the rebels. In particular, Lindov, a member of the Revolutionary Military Council, died.

With such a state of troops of the Fourth Army, the situation on its front was precarious. Despite some successes of the Fourth Army by the time Frunze arrived (the liberation of Uralsk), it was impossible to consolidate and develop these successes with such an army. In addition, its front turned out to be very stretched and in many places open to enemy breakthroughs.

Having become acquainted with this, Frunze, after a conversation with Kuibyshev, on the same day issued an order-appeal to the troops of the Fourth Army, in which he wrote:

“Comrades! The eyes of the rear, the eyes of the workers and peasants of all Russia are riveted to you. With bated breath, with trepidation in the soul, the country is following your successes. Not for the seizure of foreign lands, not for the robbery of foreign peoples, labor Russia sent you, its children, under arms.

Here, at the front, the very fate of workers' and peasants' Russia is being decided; finally resolves the dispute between labor and capital. The landlords and capitalists, defeated inside the country, are still holding out in the border regions, relying on the help of foreign brigands. By deceit and violence, by selling their homeland to foreigners, by betraying all the interests of the people - they still dream of strangling Soviet Russia and restoring the dominance of the landowner's whip.

In order to directly familiarize himself with the units of his army, Frunze went to the front. Frunze's track record during the years of the civil war is replete with notes on frequent trips to the forefront. He did not stay long in the headquarters offices, personally toured the troops and there, on the spot, identifying shortcomings, took measures to eliminate them. Mikhail Vasilyevich was looking for personal communication with the Red Army, wanting to learn from them about their needs, moods, aspirations.

His first trip was to Uralsk, the garrison of which at that time consisted of very unreliable units, infected with the spirit of "partisanism". The staff tried to dissuade Frunze from this risky trip, they warned him that there, in Uralsk, they could deal with him in the same way as with Lindov. But, despite the warnings, Frunze left, even without guards.

Indeed, in Uralsk he was met with hostility. A massacre was being prepared for him. But Mikhail Vasilyevich was able to quickly change the mood in people, inspire them with confidence in himself, proved to them their error, explained their revolutionary duty to the Motherland, to the Red Army. Long-standing closeness to the working masses, a deep understanding of their vital interests, the ability to win their trust, to infect them with a revolutionary fighting spirit - all this was now very useful to Frunze. The Bolshevik-massovik also affected the post of commander.

Frunze also knew how to win over the military specialists from the old tsarist army, helped them to get rid of their former delusions, prejudices and sincerely, honestly serve the Red Army, the Soviet government. The military specialists were greatly impressed by Frunze's talent as a commander, his extraordinary awareness of military issues, his superiority even over them, despite the fact that he did not receive a military education like them.

Everyone was also surprised by Frunze's inherent ability to select the right, capable people and place them in decisive areas. So, Mikhail Vasilyevich immediately appreciated Chapaev and, after the first acquaintance with him, appointed him commander of the shock Alexandrovo-Gai group of Soviet troops. Their names - the famous proletarian commander and the legendary folk hero - are inseparably, forever soldered by many feats and victories on the fronts of the civil war. Frunze also knew how to nominate such talented political commissars as Furmanov, who greatly contributed to the education of the Red Army masses and to the improvement of their fighting efficiency.

In all this great preparatory work, Mikhail Vasilyevich was actively assisted by his friend and colleague Valerian Vladimirovich Kuibyshev, a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Fourth Army. Rallying the people of their army, educating them in the spirit of revolutionary duty to the Motherland, Frunze and Kuibyshev tirelessly, sparing no one's strength, forged a formidable weapon against the enemy. And soon this weapon showed its strength.

On March 10, 1919, Chapaev's troops captured important point Slomikhinskaya, and then Lbishenek was taken from the battle. Thus, the Fourth Army not only held back the onslaught of the enemy, but also successfully advanced in certain directions.

Already in these operations of the Fourth Army, the characteristic features of Frunze's talent as a commander appeared. In the battles for Slomihinskaya and Lbishenek, Frunze consistently pursued the tactics not of passive defense, but of an active, energetic offensive. At the same time, Frunze considered the destruction of enemy manpower to be the main goal of offensive operations. Frunze used a combination of frontal and flank attacks on the enemy, a technique very characteristic of all his subsequent combat practice. Also indicative of the Frunze Commander was his constant desire to provide the planned operations with the necessary reserves.

Thanks to Frunze's leadership talent and energy, his troops successfully crushed the enemy. But these successes of the Fourth Army were only partial successes on the Eastern Front. Basically, the advantage was on the side of Kolchak.

In early March 1919, Kolchak launched a general offensive in the direction of the Middle Volga. For this purpose, a shock army General Khanzhin, numerically more than three times superior to the Fifth Army, against which she led a successful offensive. The White Guard hordes were moving towards Simbirsk and Samara. The blow was aimed at Moscow.

At the same time, in other regions of Soviet Russia, the White Guards, with the support of foreign invaders, were also preparing for an offensive. Yudenich was gathering the forces of the protai of Red Petrograd. Denikin resolutely sought to connect with Kolchak in the Saratov region. The enemies of the Soviet Republic wanted to strangle it in their vise.

At this critical moment, in March 1919, Frunze was appointed commander of the Southern Army Group of the Eastern Front. At first, this group consisted of two armies - the Fourth and Turkestan, and then, in April, the First and Fifth armies were additionally included in it. The situation in the South Group was difficult. In the rear of the Fourth Army, kulak-Socialist-Revolutionary mutinies flared up. The First and Fifth armies retreated under the onslaught of the Kolchakites, sometimes randomly. The Turkestan army essentially had to be re-formed in a combat situation. It was necessary quickly, on the move, under the incessant blows of the enemy, to carry out a radical restructuring of military formations, to raise their morale, turn them into combat-ready units, strengthen their will to fight and win, and at the same time suppress counter-revolutionary uprisings in the rear of the Red Army.

Under the leadership of Frunze and his closest associate Kuibyshev, who was appointed a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Southern Group, work began to boil. A broad mobilization is being carried out to replenish units and to create reserves. Fresh companies of workers and communists are pouring into the most tired regiments. Armaments - guns, machine guns, rifles, shells, cartridges - are sent from the rear to the front in a continuous stream. Large food stocks are being made. A bold regrouping is being carried out along the entire front of the Southern Group. Agitation is intensifying among the population and the masses of the Red Army, explaining the plans of the counter-revolutionary rebels.

Based on the directives of the Central Committee of the Party and V. I. Lenin, Frunze prepared a detailed plan for the counteroffensive. At this time, parts of the Southern Group in the sector between Orenburg, Samara and Simbirsk formed a ledge towards the enemy, threatening the main forces of Kolchak advancing on Samara. In turn, the planned breakthrough of the Whites to the Volga could threaten the complete defeat of the entire Southern Group. Taking this into account, Frunze came to the conclusion that the only way to stop Kolchak's offensive and to avert the threat was through a strong blow.

Frunze decided to ensure the superiority of the Soviet troops on the most important direction at the expense of the secondary ones. To do this, according to Frunze's plan, it was necessary, by skillful regrouping, to create a powerful fist in the Buzuluk region and from there deliver a flank attack on the rear of the White Guard army of General Khanzhin, advancing from Buguruslan to Samara.

Frunze's thoughtful plan, however, met with the resistance of Trotsky and his henchmen from the headquarters of the Commander-in-Chief, who insisted on the withdrawal of the Red Army beyond the Volga, allegedly in order to detain the enemy on this water line, transfer part of the troops from the Eastern to southern front.

Frunze had to expend much effort in order to prove the inconsistency and criminality of this plan. Lenin and the Central Committee of the party rejected it. Trotsky's insidious plan was thwarted. Frunze proceeded to implement his plan.

On April 10, Frunze and Kuibyshev sent an order to the armies calling on the Red Army men "to a decisive battle with the mercenary of capital - Kolchak." And a day later, the "Theses of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) in connection with the situation on the Eastern Front" compiled by Lenin were published, which played decisive role in organizing the defeat of Kolchakism. Lenin and the Party Central Committee pointed out that "Kolchak's victories on the Eastern Front pose an extremely formidable danger to the Soviet Republic. The most extreme exertion of forces is necessary to defeat Kolchak. The Central Committee of the Party called on the entire Soviet people to provide maximum assistance to the Eastern Front.

In the deep rear, mobilization into the Red Army was carried out. In the front line, all members of the trade unions were armed without exception. Committees to assist the mobilized were organized everywhere. The work of supplying the army with food intensified. All these measures contributed to a radical change on the front of the Southern Group and ensured the success of the prepared counterattack against Kolchak.

Confidence in the success of the counteroffensive was further strengthened after, on April 18, scouts from Chapaev's 25th division intercepted two orders from Kolchak's command. From these orders it became known that there was no communication between the two Kolchak corps, that there was a large gap between them along the front. In order to finally disunite the enemy corps and defeat them in parts, Frunze decided to abandon shock formations.

The general offensive was scheduled for 28 April. However, the fighting began earlier, and the success of the Soviet troops was immediately determined. Thousands of prisoners were captured from the Whites, large convoys were recaptured. And what is especially important, the offensive of Kolchak in many areas was finally suspended. This allowed the troops of the Southern Group on April 28 to successfully launch a counteroffensive on a wide front of 240 kilometers.

The counterattack against Kolchak developed in stages. It consisted of three military operations - Buguruslan, Belebeev and Ufa. The offensive was accompanied by fierce battles, as a result of which the Soviet troops won many major victories and pushed Kolchak’s troops 120–150 kilometers to the east, liberating a significant territory and many cities, including Buguruslan on May 4 and Bugulma on May 13. From that time on, the Kolchakites, having lost the initiative, were forced to go on the defensive, while the Soviet troops every day increased the strength and swiftness of the counteroffensive. In the Red Army units, a combat upsurge was clearly indicated. In Kolchak's troops, on the contrary, decomposition and disintegration intensified.

On May 17, after the liberation of Belebey by the Red Army, the defeated enemy in disorder began to retreat to the Belaya River, to Ufa. And after the Kolchakites with victorious battles, the armies of the Southern Group moved.

But these victories were not easy for Frunze. Again, it was necessary not only to overcome the fierce resistance of the Kolchak hordes, but also to wage an equally stubborn struggle against the Trotskyists, who had seized leadership positions in the headquarters of the Commander-in-Chief and in the headquarters of the Eastern Front. On May 18, in the midst of a victorious offensive, the command of the Eastern Front gave the order to suspend further advance. Trotsky's treacherous "plan" has resurfaced.

Frunze sounded the alarm. “You know,” he said on May 18 to the front commander, “what an attack I have to endure, and completely undeservedly, from Trotsky ... A number of Trotsky’s telegrams only unnerve and make it impossible to calmly and thoroughly prepare and conduct an operation.”

Again, the intervention of the Central Committee of the party and personally V. I. Lenin was required. Recalling this, Comrade Stalin subsequently, on November 19, 1924, in his speech at the plenum of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions faction said:

“You know that Kolchak and Denikin were considered the main enemies of the Soviet Republic. You know that our country breathed freely only after the victory over these enemies. And so, history says that both of these enemies, that is, both Kolchak and Denikin, were finished off by our troops contrary to Trotsky's plans. Judge for yourself:

1) About Kolchak. The case takes place in the summer of 1919. Our troops are advancing on Kolchak and operating near Ufa. Central Committee meeting. Trotsky proposes to delay the offensive along the line of the Belaya River (near Ufa), leaving the Urals in the hands of Kolchak, to withdraw part of the troops from the Eastern Front and transfer them to the Southern Front. There are heated debates. The Central Committee does not agree with Trotsky, finding that it is impossible to leave the Urals in the hands of Kolchak with its factories, with its railway network, where he can easily recover, gather his fist and find himself again at the Volga - you must first drive Kolchak beyond the Ural ridge, into the Siberian steppes , and only after that do the transfer of forces to the south. The Central Committee rejects Trotsky's plan. The latter resigns. The Central Committee does not accept resignations ...

From this moment on, Trotsky withdraws from direct participation in the affairs of the Eastern Front.

The Ufa operation began - the decisive stage of the counteroffensive. In an order dated May 23, 1919. Frunze clearly set a combat mission for his troops:

“Our first leg is Ufa; the last one is Siberia liberated from Kolchak. Boldly forward!

This task was very difficult. Blowing up the crossings behind them, the White Guards hid from the pursuit of the Belaya River - a large water frontier. At this time, after the flood, the river had not yet entered its banks and overflowed widely. The approaching Red Army units stopped in front of this wide (up to 300 meters) water barrier. And behind her, on the eastern beret, the enemy bristled with the muzzles of their batteries, put forward their elite officer regiments. There was a difficult crossing of the river under deadly gun and rifle-machine-gun fire.

And this time, Frunze's talent as a commander showed up. He again used the maneuver to flank the enemy troops. On his orders, the 25th Chapaev division was to cross north of Ufa and bypass the city on the left. Frunze instructed the 2nd and 24th divisions to cross south of Ufa and then cut off the retreat of Kolchak along the Chelyabinsk railway. Parts of the neighboring First and Fifth armies were ordered from the north and south to contribute to the success of this most important Ufa operation.

Having crossed the river, the Red troops took Ufa on June 9, 1919. In the battles for Ufa, Frunze took a direct part, being in mortal danger. In especially difficult moments, he appeared among the Red Army men and himself raised them to the attack. Leading the crossing across the Belaya River, Mikhail Vasilyevich came under enemy fire. He was severely shell-shocked by a bomb explosion. Per military merit and the courage shown in these battles, Frunze was awarded the first Order of the Red Banner.

The enemy has been defeated, but not yet destroyed. It was necessary to finish him off completely, to finish him off immediately, while his ranks were upset, while the clear advantage was on the side of the Soviet troops. This is how Frunze thought, as can be seen from his order to conduct the Ufa operation, which he considered as the beginning of the liberation of the Urals and Siberia. Lenin also demanded this. But the high command frustrated Frunze's plan. Under the pretext of failures in the south and near Petrograd, it carried out a massive withdrawal of units from the Eastern Front.

Comrade Stalin, who led the defense of Petrograd in those days and needed reinforcements, nevertheless, on June 18, declared by direct wire to Lenin that “Kolchak is the most serious enemy ... Compared to Kolchak, General Rodzianko is a fly ... Therefore, in no case should we should take from the Eastern Front such a number of troops for the Petrograd Front that could force us to suspend the offensive on the Eastern Front.

Trotsky's sabotage practice on the Eastern Front was paralyzed. It was against Trotsky that Lenin’s words were directed: “To weaken the offensive against the Urals and Siberia would mean being a traitor to the revolution, a traitor to the cause of liberating the workers and peasants from the yoke of Kolchak.”

With the support of I.V. Stalin and the Central Committee of the Party, Frunze was able to undertake an energetic pursuit of the Kolchakites, who were retreating beyond the Urals, to Siberia. And for greater success in this, on July 13, 1919, Frunze was appointed commander of the entire Eastern Front.

This appointment was joyfully welcomed by all the armies of the front. Even more rapidly they continued the victorious offensive. Already on July 25, Chelyabinsk was to be taken. Frunze fulfilled Lenin's directive on the liberation of the Urals.

Kolchak's days were numbered. Churchill tried in vain to cheer up his protege with hypocritically false telegrams. “Success,” he wrote to Kolchak in October 1919, “which crowned the extraordinary efforts of Your Excellency’s army, pleases me beyond words. Despite the distance separating us, I am deeply aware that this was achieved in such difficult conditions only thanks to your unwavering courage and firmness.

Of course, "despite the distance separating them," Churchill was well aware that Kolchak not only had no success, but that he was on the verge of complete destruction. And knowing this, Churchill at that time pinned all his hopes on another protege of the Entente - Denikin.

Kolchak's troops, under the blows of the Red Army, retreated in two directions: their southern group of General Belov - to the southeast, to Turkestan, and Kolchak's northern armies - to the east, along the Siberian railway.

Retreating into the depths of Siberia, Kolchak suffered one defeat after another. Feeling his complete impotence and inevitable death, Kolchak resigned the powers of the "supreme ruler" in early January 1920, and a few days later was captured by the insurgent workers. By order of the Irkutsk Military Revolutionary Committee, on February 7, 1920, Kolchak was shot.

KOLCHAK OFFENSIVE of 1919, the strategic offensive operation of the Kolchak armies, carried out March 4 - May 19, with the aim of defeating the Soviet troops of the Eastern Front, linking up with other white armies in the north and south of Russia and creating a united front against the RSFSR. By the beginning of spring 1919, Soviet troops (1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th armies; Volga military flotilla - a total of 95 thousand bayonets, 9 thousand sabers, 362 guns, about 1.9 thousand machine guns, 9 armored trains, about 30 aircraft, 38 ships and vessels) of the Eastern Front (commander S. S. Kamenev, since May 5 A. A. Samoilo) reached the line of Lbischensk, Aktyubinsk, Orsk, east of Ufa, Okhansk and further north. They were opposed by the troops of Admiral A.V. Kolchak, which included the Siberian and Western armies, the Kama military flotilla, as well as the Cossack Separate Orenburg and Ural armies that were under his operational subordination (a total of 100-120 thousand bayonets, about 26 thousand sabers, 211 guns, 1 3 thousand machine guns, 5 armored trains, 12 armored vehicles, 15 aircraft, over 40 ships and vessels). On March 4-6, they went on the offensive, inflicting the main blows on the Ufa-Samara (Western Army) and Izhevsk-Kazan (Siberian Army) directions. Having inflicted a number of defeats Soviet troops, the Siberian army at the end of April reached the approaches to Yelabuga and Glazov, and the advanced units of the Western Army were 100-120 km from Samara and Kazan. The Cossacks fought for Orenburg and Uralsk. The center of the Eastern Front was broken through, a gap about 200 km wide formed between the Soviet 2nd and 5th armies, where the group of Kolchak troops rushed. The further advance of Kolchak's armies and the retreat of the Red Army units across the Volga inevitably led to the connection of Kolchak's troops with units of the All-Union Socialist Revolutionary Federation and created a threat to the central regions of Soviet Russia. Nevertheless, the troops of the Eastern Front, having withstood the blow of the enemy, retained their combat effectiveness, gained time to concentrate reserves and prepare a counteroffensive. At the same time, they stepped up operations against the Western Army. A number of private counterattacks by the Soviet troops (on the Salmysh and Dema rivers, in the Buzuluk region) led to the defeat of several Kolchak formations and created the conditions for a counteroffensive. On April 28, the Southern Army Group (M.V. Frunze) of the Eastern Front launched a counterattack on the left flank of the Western Army and defeated it. The counterattack marked the beginning of the defeat of Kolchak's troops (see Counteroffensive of the Eastern Front 1919). The Siberian army at that time continued the offensive and by mid-May its units reached the Vyatka and Kilmez rivers. However, the retreat of the Western Army forced the Siberian Army to first weaken its onslaught, and on May 19 to completely stop the offensive.

Despite the fact that during the Kolchak offensive, parts of the Western and Siberian armies inflicted a number of defeats on the Soviet troops, threw them back to a depth of more than 400 km to the west and reached the approaches to the Volga, the main task was to connect with parts of the white armies operating in the north and south European part of Russia - was not implemented.

Lit .: Eikhe G. Kh. Kolchak's Ufa adventure (March - April 1919). M., 1960. See also the literature under the article Kolchak's army.

In mid-September, opponents of the Bolsheviks held the Ufa Conference. Its main participants were the Socialist-Revolutionary Komuch and the Siberian government (much more right-wing in sentiment). At the meeting, a single government was elected - Directory- from five people. It included the Cadets and Socialist-Revolutionaries. However, the Directory lasted only a few weeks ... At the end of September 1918 Kolchak together with General Knox arrived in the capital of white Siberia - Omsk. He has no position, Kolchak is a private, civilian person. But already on November 4, the admiral was appointed military and naval minister in the All-Russian Provisional Government.

On November 18, in Omsk, where the new government was located, there was military coup. The rebellious officers arrested the left members of the Directory, and the right handed over power to the Minister of War, Admiral Kolchak A.V. , a famous polar explorer and scientist, former commander Black Sea Fleet. Kolchak becomes the de facto dictator of the country, the bearer supreme power. There were no legal grounds for this. The government that gave power to Kolchak was itself elected by a handful of deputies from the dispersed Constituent Assembly. In addition, it made its "noble" step as a result of the coup, being arrested.

How political figure Kolchak fully corresponded to the mood of the officers who fought the Bolsheviks. His government could count on full support in military circles. Admiral took title Supreme Ruler of Russia.

Following General Knox, other representatives of the "allies" came to Siberia. To communicate with the army of Admiral Kolchak, France sent General Janin. Visiting the Supreme Ruler of Russia, Janin informed him of his authority to take command not only of all the forces of the Entente in this theater, but also of all the White armies in Siberia . In other words, the French general demanded complete submission from the head of the Russian state. Kolchak rejects Janin's proposal. However, he instructs Janin to replace him at the front and be his assistant ...

Kolchak tried to win the recognition of the West. To him, who came to Russia at the suggestion of the British and French, the absence of their official support seemed incredible. And she was always postponed ... In November 1918, Kolchak A.V. launched an offensive in the Urals. The Kolchak army tried to advance to Vyatka and further to the North in order to connect with the detachments of General Miller E.K. and organizing a joint attack on Moscow.

Again, the Eastern Front became the main one. On December 25, Kolchak's troops took Perm, but already on December 31, their offensive was stopped by the Red Army. In the east, the front temporarily stabilized.

From October 1918 to October 1919, the British handed over to Kolchak more than 600 thousand rifles, 6831 machine guns, 1200 guns, tanks, aircraft, ammunition, more than 200 thousand sets of uniforms. Kolchak had many military advisers from England, France, the USA, and Japan. By the spring of 1919, the Supreme Ruler of Russia had gathered an army of about 300 thousand soldiers.

It must be emphasized that in March 1919 Kolchak rejected the proposal to start peace negotiations with the Bolsheviks. He again and again demonstrated to the emissaries of the West that the interests of Russia are above all for him. Abandoned the attempt to divide Russia and Denikin A.I. And then the British, French and Americans finally decide to bet on the Bolsheviks. It was from March 1919 that the West took a course towards the final liquidation of the White movement.

But it was precisely in the spring of 1919 that it seemed that white victory is near. The red front is about to collapse completely. You just need to help the white armies a little, just a little, and the bloody nightmare will end. fighting are large-scale, therefore they require a large amount of ammunition, resources, people and money. It's like a huge firebox of a locomotive, where you have to throw, throw, throw. Otherwise, you won't go anywhere. Did the "allies" help Kolchak at this decisive moment? Was a "coal" thrown into his military firebox?

Map of the defeat of the troops of Kolchak A.V., October 1919 - March 1920

Here is the answer to this question from the memoirs of Alexander Mikhailovich Romanov: “But then something strange happened. Instead of following the advice of their experts, the heads of the allied states pursued a policy that forced Russian officers and soldiers to experience the greatest disappointments in our former allies and even admit that the Red Army protects the integrity of Russia from the encroachments of foreigners. (Romanov A.M. « Book of memories”, M.: ACT, 2008, p. 356).

The excitement of the offensive in 1919 struck Denikin, and Yudenich, and Kolchak. All of their armies are not fully formed, not trained and armed. And yet the whites stubbornly march forward to their doom. Marvelous. It was as if an eclipse had come over them all. White is going to take Moscow, but they only step on it not at the same time, but at different times, in turn. This will allow Trotsky to smash them piece by piece.

Of course the leaders of the whites, the Russian generals, were not illiterate officers. Of course, they knew the basics of military art. To force them to act contrary to common sense could only those from whom the fighters "for the One and the Indivisible" totally dependent...

In the spring of 1919, the Supreme Ruler of Russia had two options for action.

1. Stand still and, taking advantage of the complete passivity of the enemy, complete the formation, cohesion and supply of your army, and also by all means contact Denikin to agree on joint actions.

2. Immediately act actively so as not to give the Reds a break. Admiral Kolchak chooses an offensive. You can also move in two directions.

1. Having put up a barrier in the direction of Vyatka and Kazan, send the main forces to Samara and Tsaritsyn, in order to join Denikin's army there and only then, together with him, move to Moscow. (Baron Wrangel unsuccessfully tried to get Denikin's sanction for the same decision.)

2. Move in the direction of Kazan-Vyatka with a further exit through Kotlas to Arkhangelsk and Murmansk, to the huge stocks of equipment concentrated there. In addition, this significantly reduced the delivery time from England, because the way to Arkhangelsk is incomparably shorter than the way to Vladivostok.

Kolchak chose ... an even more unsuccessful strategy! The third option, the most unfortunate, provided for simultaneous attack on both Vyatka and Samara. Kolchak was persuaded to accept this strategy. Such a disastrous plan of attack was considered and approved by the French General Staff. The British also ardently insisted on it. The supreme ruler of Russia sent his armies along diverging straight lines. And he aimed his strongest army at Vyatka, that is, at a secondary direction. Hitler's strategists will make the same mistake in 1942, advancing simultaneously on Stalingrad and the Caucasus.

Kolchak's offensive began on March 4, 1919. Throughout the vast stretch of the Eastern Front - from the forests of the Northern Urals to the Orenburg steppes - Kolchak's armies went on the offensive. Regardless of the losses, they rushed forward. Soon the front was broken. Capturing March 14 Ufa, Kolchak fought their way to Simbirsk, Samara, Votkinsk.

By mid-April, the Whites were already 85 km from Kazan, approached Samara and Simbirsk. Kolchak planned a breakthrough beyond the Volga and a connection with the troops of the general Denikin. During their offensive, the Kolchakites captured a significant territory of 300 thousand km 2 with a population of over 5 million people, but the turning point came quickly enough. Having advanced only two months, Kolchak's troops began to retreat uncontrollably.

The internal weakness of the anti-Soviet movement, the ambitions of a number of leaders who claimed to lead the entire movement, had an effect. The split between the socialists, the Cadets and the monarchists deepened. Growing dissatisfaction with the economic policy of the main part of the army - the peasants. Behind the lines of the White Army (in the Urals, in Siberia) growing mass guerrilla movement. A departure from the white movement of national units (since their peoples did not receive state self-determination, autonomy), the Cossacks (internally split along property lines) began. The morale of Kolchak's army was falling ...

A very important, perhaps decisive, role was to be played by the mood of the local population. Will the peasants support Kolchak, will they provide his armies with a reliable rear? Here are the lines from a letter from a Permian peasant, written after the arrival of the White Guards, in November: “We waited for Kolchak, like the day of Christ, and we waited - like the most predatory beast. Here we have flogged everyone in a row, the right and the guilty. If they do not fasten, then they shoot or pin with a bayonet. God forbid this fierce Kolchak.

The land program of A. Kolchak, who urged the peasants to wait for the decision of the future National Assembly, of course, could not satisfy the farmers. The land was returned to small owners (farmers, etc.), which also irritated the peasants. Any manifestation of dissatisfaction with the authorities was severely suppressed.

In 1919, while giving an interview, Kerensky A.F. , a political opponent of Kolchak, said: “In Siberia, not only cases of execution and torture take place, but often the entire population of the villages is flogged, not excluding teachers and intellectuals ... Thanks to Kolchak, a new and strengthened Bolshevik movement was created.”

many peasants began to leave for the red partisan detachments operating in the rear of the Whites. In total, up to 140 thousand people fought in such detachments. A peasant uprising spread throughout Siberia like a flood, which catastrophically weakened the rear of the armies of A. Kolchak. Curiously, even in partisan detachments the peasants continued to hesitate - who should they follow, the "whites" or the "reds"? Both of them, from the point of view of the peasants, had shortcomings, but the "whites" apparently aroused great hostility.

In response to the call of the party: "Everyone to fight Kolchak!" The Bolsheviks announced additional mobilization into the Red Army and were able to stop the advance of the troops of the Supreme Ruler. Troops of the Red Army under the command and Frunze M.V. launched active preparations for a counteroffensive. In May 1919, thanks to his clear preparation, Buguruslan, Bugulma and Belebey were liberated, which created favorable opportunities for further successful military operations on the Eastern Front.

In May Lenin V.I. wrote to the command of the Eastern Front: “If we do not conquer the Urals before winter, then I consider the death of the revolution inevitable; strain all your strength ... ”The main blow on the Eastern Front was delivered by the Red Guards in the southern sector of the army of Frunze M.V. Fierce battles unfolded in the steppe expanses of the Trans-Volga region, in the foothills of the Southern Urals. And here the 25th division, commanded by Chapaev V.I.

The Chapaevites near Ufa withstood a big and hard battle. Kolchak hoped to stop the Reds on the Belaya River and created heavily fortified positions here. “The enemy went across the river, blew up all the crossings and bristled on the high Ufa bank with gun vents, machine-gun throats, bayonets of divisions and corps,” recalled the commissar of the 25th division, the writer Furmanov.

On a June night, on rafts and boats, on logs and boards, the Chapaevs crossed the fast river. On the Ufa coast, fierce battles broke out. The Kolchakites continuously attacked the Reds, trying in vain to push them back across the river. But the Red Army fought to the death. Those among them were wounded and a bomb exploded near them. On June 9, Ufa was liberated, and by the end of June 1919, a general offensive of the troops of the Eastern Front to the Urals was launched.

At the same time, the troops of the Northern Group of the Eastern Front, under the command of a former colonel of the tsarist army, were pressing Kolchak in the Middle Urals. The regiments of the 21st division, having made a difficult transition through the burning peat bogs, reached the Kama. With the help of the Volga military flotilla, they crossed to the other side. The full-flowing Kama was also crossed by other divisions of the Reds.

Kolchakites, who settled in Perm, found themselves in a hopeless situation. During the retreat, they burned more than 100 ships and 38 barges, many of them were food, oil, kerosene. The Red Army soldiers broke into the flaming, smoke-shrouded city. Kolchakites suffered defeat after defeat. On July 14, the fighters of the 28th division under the command of Azin V.M. entered into The largest city Ural Yekaterinburg. Ten days later, the Red Army soldiers, led by the commander of one of the regiments of the 27th division, Vostretsov, broke into Chelyabinsk.

November 14 Kolchak A.V. lost his capital city Omsk. The White Army withdraws. This way of the cross will later be called the Siberian Ice Campaign. Three thousand kilometers in the taiga, in the snow, along the bed of frozen rivers. The retreating White Guards carry all their weapons and ammunition. But cannons cannot be dragged through the forests. Artillery rushes. General Kappel, appointed by the admiral to command the troops at this critical moment, froze his legs after falling into the hole. In the nearest village, with a simple knife, the doctor cut off his toes and a piece of the heel. No anesthesia, no wound treatment. Two weeks later, Kappel died - pneumonia was added to the consequences of the amputation ...

But even in the current nightmare situation, the frozen Whites had a chance to stop and repel the advance of the Red Army. If the fire of the uprisings prepared by the Socialist-Revolutionaries had not ignited in the rear at once. As scheduled, uprisings began almost simultaneously in all industrial centers. Many months of agitation by the Socialist-Revolutionaries has done its job. The Bolsheviks were much closer to them than the "reactionary" tsarist generals.

In early January 1920 Kolchak A.V. resigned the title of Supreme Ruler of Russia and handed them over to General Denikin. Two weeks later, the Czechoslovaks guarding the admiral handed him over to the new authorities for arrest. The extradition of Kolchak took place on January 15, 1920. This was largely due to the fact that in the Czechoslovak Corps they had long looked disapprovingly at the harsh methods of dealing with the unrest by the Siberian military authorities.

One of the statements of the corps command said: “Under the protection of the Czechoslovak bayonets, the local Russian military authorities allow themselves actions that will horrify the entire civilized world. The burning of villages, the beating of peaceful Russian citizens by the hundreds ... are a common occurrence. If the "allies" wanted to take Kolchak out alive, no one would have prevented them from doing so. There was simply no such force ... But the Entente no longer needed the admiral ... On February 7, 1920, Alexander Vasilyevich Kolchak was shot by the verdict of the Irkutsk Revolutionary Committee.

On the night of November 18, 1918, in the city of Omsk, a group of Cossack officers, having arrested members of the Directory from the socialist parties, proclaimed Admiral Kolchak the Supreme Ruler of Russia. Having accepted such a title, Kolchak by the spring of 1919 mobilized about 400 thousand people in the territories subject to him and went on the offensive.

The changeable fortune of Admiral Kolchak

The Western army of Kolchak, in late March, early April, captured Ufa, Bugulma and Buguruslan. A favorable situation arose for capturing the cities of Simbirsk and Samara. Connecting the Siberian and Western armies of Kolchak, the middle military group was already on the outskirts of Kazan. Atamans Dutov and Tolstov operated south of Ufa and all the way to Turkestan, in the direction of Orenburg and Uralsk. The successful offensive of Kolchak created the preconditions for a connection with the White Guard army of Denikin. Kolchak was already making plans to unite the armies in the Saratov region and in the future a joint campaign against the Mother See.
But by the end of April of that year, circumstances had changed dramatically. The corps of interventionists providing the rear of the Kolchakites, which together numbered over 100 thousand people at that time, sharply decreased. In part, the interventionists left the country, while the rest retreated to eastern Siberia and settled in the Far East.
On South Western Siberia the partisan movement developed widely in response to the almost feudal dictatorship established by Kolchak. General requisitions, indemnities, taxes for the past and future. Public floggings and executions of those dissatisfied with such a policy did not contribute to supporting the power of the supreme ruler. These circumstances made it impossible for the further offensive of Kolchak's army and created the prerequisites for the counteroffensive of the Red Army.
The Soviet Eastern Front, at the end of April, launched a large-scale offensive operation. The Northern and Southern Operational Groups formed the day before were involved in the counteroffensive, while the main blow was dealt by the Southern Operational-Tactical Group, led by Mikhail Vasilyevich Frunze. Concentrated on the direction of decisive blows, with superior forces, the Red Army undertook offensive operations. The general counteroffensive developed in three directions: to Buguruslan, to Belebey and to Ufa.
In the first case, access to the rear of Kolchak's Western Army was secured, which immediately stopped its offensive operations. In the second operation, Frunze defeated the enemy's reserves, which ensured a deep wedging of the Eastern Front of the "Reds" into the battle formations of the "Whites". On the third, Ufa direction, two military groups of Kolchak's army were defeated. Such successes of the Red Army contributed to its advance through the Ural Mountains.
These battles brightly highlighted the extraordinary talent of the legendary division commander Vasily Ivanovich Chapaev. His 25th division in the Ufa region successfully repulsed the attacks of the no less legendary commander of the White Guard Corps, General Kappel. Then, being transferred to the Ural front. There, having successfully lifted a two-month siege from the city of Uralsk, the Chapaev division continued its offensive in a southerly direction. But on September 5, the headquarters of the division, led by Chapaev, was surrounded in the area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe village of Lbischenskaya. There, trying to cross the Ural River, the legendary division commander drowned.

Defeat and betrayal

Meanwhile, the Red Army continued to develop the offensive. In mid-July, the Red Army occupied Yekaterinburg, a little later Chelyabinsk. In August, the troops of the Soviet Eastern Front, having defeated the army of General Belov with the southern wing, in September-October inflicted a decisive defeat on the Whites in the area between the Ishim and Tobol rivers. After these failures, what was left of Kolchak's army rolled into the hinterland of Siberia. In November, Omsk was abandoned, and already in January 1920, the defeat of Kolchak's army was generally completed.
The supreme ruler, together with his ministers, was forced to move to Irkutsk, where an uprising of the townspeople against Kolchak had already broken out. Foreign invaders, for the most part, the Czechs declared their neutrality. Kolchak, who turned to them for help, was initially extradited by the former allies to the Socialist-Revolutionaries from the Irkutsk Political Center. They handed over the Supreme Ruler to the Bolsheviks from the Revolutionary Committee, who, after an impromptu trial, shot Admiral Kolchak and his Chairman of the Council of Ministers Viktor Pepelyaev on February 7, 1920. The bodies of the executed were lowered into the hole on the Angara River.
The defeat of Kolchak's army became possible for a number of objective and subjective reasons. Among them, one should single out those unsuitable for the management method, the lack of the necessary personnel and the unwillingness to fight among the majority of existing soldiers and officers. Disagreements with the socialists and the leadership of the Czechoslovak corps. In addition, Kolchak was a capable naval commander, and not a land general.