The hollow victory – Reigning on a graveyard
“I didn’t want to have anything to do with a man who had betrayed the integrity of the Russian Empire; that is all”.
- Admiral Kolchak, to British journalist Peter Fleming, 1934.
“The Grand-duke Nikolaï has given me the command of all the country up to Zakramouransk, with the order of fighting the jew Kolchak and his evil clique! For the Soviets and the Land ! Death to the yids and the bourjouis!”
- Bogomilov, peasant ringleader, central Siberia, winter 1920.
November 1919 – January 1920: The remaining areas of Central Russia under Bolshevik control are progressively cleared by the White armies, with the exception of Astrakhan, which successfully repels the half-hearted attempts of the Don Cossacks. Elsewhere, cities fall with relative easiness. More often than not, Left SRs and Mensheviks take power before the Whites attack, but this doesn’t prevent massive massacres and pogroms. In other cities like Yaroslavl, the Reds proceed to leave only corpses behind them, which leads to even bloodier pogroms perpetrated by the Whites. The 10 December, Kolchak finally reaches Moscow, while the most of his troops are still fighting a Bolshevik revolt in the southern Urals.
Winter 1919-1920 – An Etat des lieux
Structure of the new régime
During the month of December, the principles of the new régime are established. The generals see themselves as a provisional dictatorship, retaining power only as long as “Russia’s situation needs it”. There is no more reference to the Constituent Assembly but in the vaguest terms of “restoring Russia’s freedom” etc.
Admiral Kolchak has retained his title of Supreme Ruler of All Russias and is officially considered as Chief of State. But Kolchak is little more than a figurehead (after all, he didn’t win the Civil War): the real supreme power lies in the so-called “Supreme Council of National Unity”, an assembly of high-ranked officers. In December 1919, its composition is the following one:
First, Denikin and his close allies, Lukomsky, Dragomirov, and Romanovsky. Wrangel, the bitterest rival of Denikin, is also on board, because he is simply too popular among the officers and right-wing conservatives to be left at bay. Kolchak manages to impose his loyal Dietricks, but his former chief of staff Lebedev is too discredited to be on board. Despite the fierce opposition of Kolchak against the man who surrendered Finland, Yudenich is confirmed as Military Governor of Petrograd and promoted as member of the Supreme Council
in absentia. This is not only a blatant rebuff for Kolchak; this is also a elegant way of deterring Yudenich to play his own game with Finnish support. Miller (who is busy fighting a Left-SR uprising in Yaroslavl), is added as well, mostly because of his (supposed) good relations with Britain. The first hint of the forthcoming “Cossack crisis” appears when General Sidorin, head of the Don Army, refuses flatly to join the Council, arguing that his
voisko doesn’t allow him to do so.
The Ministries are mere administrative departments, closely subordinated to the Supreme Council. With the exception of Lukomsky, Ministers are rather non-descript right-wing Kadets or conservatives politicians. They are as ineffectual and powerless as they were in Ekaterinodar or Omsk while in charge of the White administration. Pepelyaev, the Prime Minister of Kolchak, is promoted at the head of this hollow government, a small consolation prize for Kolchak's clique, which on the whole feels ill-treated by the Southerners.
The weakness of the new government is also aggravated by the fact that soon enough nearly every member of the Supreme Council receives other attributions, another proof that the White generals see themselves as soldiers, and clearly not as politicians. For example, Denikin is made Supreme Commander of the Russian Armies with Romanovsky remaining his Chief of Staff. Wrangel is promoted to the head of the South-Russian Armies (i.e. Volunteers, Caucasus and Don). Dietricks is appointed to the Eastern Armies. Lukomsky becomes Ministry of War (and thus the only member of the Supreme Council being also at the head of a minister).
That is well and good, but outside the wall of the Kremlin (how ironic that Kolchak and his colleagues are seating just where seated Lenin and his evil cronies), the situation is dire indeed: the amount of internal issues would in itself be overwhelming for the best government. And there is a reasonable amount of foreign threats, of course.
Central Russia and Little Russia
First of all, the grip of the junta over Russia is all but firm. Massive uprisings of peasants are erupting all across the country. The whole Tambov area, for example, is governed by an independent “Peasants’ Soviet Republic”. The situation is no better in Ukraine: anarchists and peasants rebels like Makhno are spreading everywhere, while the northwestern part is under control of Polish forces, from where Petliura’s nationalists are agitating in Russian-held Ukraine. Whites are no more popular in the cities. The first arrivals of food from Ukraine and Kuban have at first led workers to begrudgingly accept the new régime, but as Ukraine is falling into anarchy, shortage of food appears again, and discontent naturally follows.
These social emotions are of course stirred up by leftist parties, with different aims. For the Left SRs and the Bolsheviks, the goal is simply to continue the fight, while for Right SRs and Mensheviks; it is a way to force the White junta to hold their promise of a Constituent Assembly.
Warlordism is also observed. Bulak-Balakovich has settled in Minsk, where he acts as a quasi-independent ruler. There is much talk of his intrigues with Lithuania and the Belarus People’s Republic in exile. Bermondt-Avalov has established himself in Pskov, where he gives asylum to Baltic Germans fleeing Estlandia and Latvia.
Politicians are reappearing everywhere, very much to the grief of the Supreme Council, who expected at least a year of “quiet rule”. Right SRs are the most vocal, because of all the socialist parties they were the less affected by the repression. They ask for an immediate convocation of the Constituent Assembly, and now that Bolshevism has fallen, some of them are already allying themselves with their leftist counterpart in order to agitate against the Supreme Council. Mensheviks, now in a key position among the workers, are spreading revolutionary calls in the factories, while negotiating secretly with the Right SRs and the Kadets.
The Kadets are in an ambiguous situation. They have no overwhelming sympathy for the militarist junta, they are craving for a strong civilian government and a parlementarian régime, but on the other hand they perfectly know that in a Constituent election without any stolypinian “corrective”, they would do pretty badly. Hence a two-faced tactic. On one hand they are servilely supporting the Supreme Council in its will of delaying the election, while on the other they are intriguing with the left parties in order to not be pushed aside when the day of forming a democratic government will come.
Political activity in the cities is rising as the Civil war goes to its end. Politic parties and
intelligentsy try to recreate a civil society.
This leads us to another point: the return of the émigrés.
Most of the émigrés who made it to Europe are not yet coming back: they’re currently considering doing so. It will take some months in any case. But there are thousands of people who went no further than Kiev or Odessa or Ekaterinodar or Novorossiisk or Riga or Helsingfors or Omsk, and they are coming back. Which is just what Russia didn’t need at the moment. Aristocrats are returning to their estates, often accompanied by White soldiers hired as a private militia: either the peasants submit and surrender the lands to their rightful owner, or they rise in rebellion and put an axe in the said-owner’s head: in any case, this is not helping appeasing the situation in the campaigns.
The return of the bourgeoisie in the cities is not as worrisome. Here, after two years of Bolshevik reign (understand: slavery), the workers are not too much troubled by the return of the owners. Well, they certainly are, but not enough to enter in open rebellion. There are indeed some protests and strikes, but nothing like the soon-to-be Petrograd uprising of spring 1920.
The army: The White armies are not in good shape. Conscripts are deserting
en masse to return to their villages. A lot of officers, already no too much preoccupied of fighting during the War, are now busy making a living out of the new situation. Corruption, already humungous during the conflict, is reaching new heights. Officers ! They are everywhere (but in the army), trading the remaining Allies stocks before they disappear, smoothly extorting people, bourjouis and common folk alike.
No wonder that the fighting spirit of the troops is declining steadily, without even considering the Cossack crisis. The decline of the White army will prove to be a major problem for the Supreme Council in the forthcoming months.
To follow: A survey of the (not-so) ‘peripheral’ issues. There will be plentiful of Cossacks, threatening Polacks, not-so friendly Finns, Transcaucasian stuff, diplomatic shenanigans and Transsiberian thugs.