AH Challenge: Whites win Russian Civil War

yourworstnightmare

Banned
Donor
With a PoD at the October Revolution, have the Whites win the Russian Civil War. It might sound easy, but this is really a hard one.
 
Kolchak recognizes Finnish independance -> Judenic and Mannerheim take Petrograd.

The Whites have a major port for the West to run supplies into and roll on to Moscow.
 
Maybe a linkup between the Ukrainian and Siberian Whites? it was the Bolsheviks nightmare for a while I believe.

some semblance of unity between the generals, SR's and all the other factions would help too, as would recognizing their not getting the old Imperial borders and trieing to strike deals with the Finns, Poles, Basmarchi, etc.
 

Wolfpaw

Banned
Pretty simple, actually. The widespread myth/belief that the Whites couldn't have won the Russian Civil War is actually one of my pet peeves.

In October of 1919, Denikin was launching his offensive on Moscow. While the Whites were not what one would necessarily call "unified," they were far from the splintered warlords they would become in 1920 and for the remainder of the war.

Wrangel had fairly solid control over the majority of White forces in Southern Russia/the Ukraine since his spat with Denikin hadn't yet flared up (it was by and large caused by the decisive failure of the Moscow campaign), and the same goes for Yudenich in the Baltics and Kolchak in Siberia. In fact, up until 1920, Kolchak was still officially regarded by Denikin, Wrangel, and Yudenich as the legitimate Commander-in-Chief of all White forces.

If Denikin is not betrayed by Makhno while he's en route to Moscow, or if he just decides not to send six regiments back to fight Makhno (which they never wound up doing, the anarchists basically having just pulled an ineffectual hit-and-run on Denikin's supply lines before the reinforcements could do anything about it), Denikin would most likely have defeated the Bolsheviks at the Battle of Orel.

A White victory at Orel that means that the Bolsheviks are going to reconsider the forces they sent to beef-up Petrograd (which they had previously thought of abandoning and were only dissuaded by Trotsky ignoring their opinions and sending them anyways) and call them back to the capital. This means that Petrograd will fall to Yudenich and, even if the Red forces make it back in time, Moscow will probably fall to Denikin.

We should remember that in OTL, the Whites only really started to come undone after 1919 (corruption, drug abuse, arms-dealing, black marketeering, etc. were already endemic to the Whites, but not yet cripplingly so). The winter of 1919 is when Yudenich bowed out, basically leaving Whites in the Baltics and northwestern Russia without a leader. It's also the year that Denikin and Wrangel started fighting over what to do with their forces, a fight that would lead to Wrangel's resignation (and later brief re-installment) and Denikin and his cronies-cum-warlords grabbing land, wantonly looting, alienating Ukrainians with cultural chauvinism, and basically reversing all of the progress that the reform-minded Wrangel had initiated, thereby losing the support of most of the peasantry. And Kolchak? Well, he just got more and more autocratic when he realized he was the Whites' last chance at achieving anything.

So there we have it. A White victory complete with all of the delicious butterflies that come with them still having refused to recognize Finnish and Polish independence :D
 
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The Vulture

Banned
Wolfpaw's got it.

Less corruption and psychotic histrionics from people like Von Ungern and the Whites might have had a decent chance.
 
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