alternatehistory.com

…following the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk the Bolsheviks were forced to withdraw from their outer territories by a splintering of their coalition. Too many viewed the action as a betrayal of the principles of the July Revolution, with units defecting, deserting or even simply going home. Units loyal to the Bolshevik cause were forced to withdraw in order to preserve themselves. The new Cheka, more oppressive and within months an order of magnitude larger than the Czarist Okhrana, was kept very busy dealing with the Bolsheviks old allies the Left-SRs and other socialist parties that had supported them in the July Revolution. However the anti-Bolshevik coalition was no better organized.

Opposition forces were stretched in an arc from Archangelsk in the north to Kazan, to Ulyanovsk to Penza, Tambov, Lipetsk and the borders of the Ukraine in the south. The Moscow centered nature of the Russian rail and telegraph networks provided no ends of difficult to their movements and communications. Furthermore the practical authority of the provisional government in Omsk over the anti-Bolshevik forces was almost nil. The provisional government was as much a product of the February Revolution as the Bolsheviks were and just as tainted in the eyes of the conservatives and reactionaries who provided the military leadership. Only the control of the flow of supplies from abroad gave the provisional government any real influence.

As such both parties spent spring and early summer of 1918 merely skirmishing and reorganizing, with most of the remaining anti-Bolshevik pockets in the West being neutralized, and the same for Bolshevik insurgencies in the Caucuses and most of the cities in the East. The flashpoint that would reignite the conflict was Tsaritsyn, better known by its Bolshevik renaming of Stalingrad.

Early in the Russian civil war Bolshevik insurgents established themselves in the industrial areas of the city, and unlike elsewhere managed to hold out. If the Bolsheviks could link up with them, then they could control the Volga River and cut off Anti-Bolshevik forces in the South. Thus at the beginning of July they launched a two-pronged assault to take the city. The first focused on taking Tambov as a jumping off point to taking Saratov and then moving down the Volga to Tsaritsyn. The second focused on taking Lipetsk, moving on to Voronezh, and then overland to Tsaritsyn.

The initial attacks were successful and Tambov and Lipetsk fell within two weeks. At this point the Anti-Bolshevik forces realized what was going on and mobilized reinforcements to defend Saratov and Voronezh. At Saratov perhaps the fiercest battle of the war would ensue as the city would change hands no fewer than 11 times between September 1918 and June 1919. Only the relative paucity of artillery ammunition on both sides prevented the city from being turned into a moonscape as sometimes seen on the Western front or in some of the greater battles of the Second World War.

At Voronezh the matter was different, there were fewer forces available in that section of the front to face the Bolsheviks, and more importantly fewer supplies. Bolshevik artillery and machine gun crews were thus able to establish fire superiority over their counterparts and the Anti-Bolshevik forces retreated into the city to stand a siege. Forty days into the siege a relief expedition was beaten off, as was another thirty days later. Ninety-Six Days into the siege the defenders surrendered on December 10th. The Bolsheviks were then free to advance on Tsaritsyn.

Trotsky himself took command of the forces at Voronezh, recognizing the importance of the offensive. Despite the winter snows an offensive would go in, the Bolsheviks at Tsaritsyn could not wait until spring to be relieved. If they were defeated a considerable amount of troops would be freed up to check the Bolsheviks elsewhere. A sled borne supply train was organized and the force departed on December 20th.

Small parties of cavalry and light infantry harassed the column on the way, slowing its pace to a crawl. Attacks on their supply train forced them to forage from the civilian population, before scorched earth forced them to eat dead horses and mules. Slowed but not stopped the Column arrived at the outskirts of Tsaritsyn on February 2nd. A blocking force attempted to keep them from breaking the siege, but the defenders were not expecting the quantity, nor frankly the quality of the artillery Trotsky brought with him. Despite outnumbering him they could not bring their superior forces to bear due to the need to contain the industrial districts and Trotsky was able to defeat them piecemeal with his superior firepower. By February 4th the Anti Bolshevik garrison of Tsaritsyn was forced to withdraw, and none too soon for the bedraggled Bolsheviks in the city. Another week and they would have had to surrender.

With Tsaritsyn in their hands the Bolsheviks had cut off their enemies in the South. Once the Volga thawed sufficiently a Bolshevik column easily traveled down river and seized Astrakhan within two weeks campaign. The Provisional Government and the anti-Bolshevik forces realized that the situation was lost and pulled out of Saratov in late June, having wasted enormous amounts of blood for no gain. The Bolsheviks were poised to wrap up the south over the summer, and then sweep north and east, however the situation in the West had just changed enormously…

-Excerpt from European Wars for Americans, Harper & Brothers, New York, 2004


Edit: Okay figured out bold even with my crap browser. Now time for something completely different