Cossacks during the Civil War. Cossacks as the cause of the Civil War in Russia

· Cossacks in the Civil War. Part II. 1918

· In the fire of fratricidal Troubles.·

The civil war in Siberia had its own characteristics. Siberia's territorial space was several times larger than the territory of European Russia. The peculiarity of the Siberian population was that it did not know serfdom, there were no large landowners' lands that constrained the peasants' possessions, and there was no land question. In Siberia, administrative and economic exploitation of the population was much weaker because the centers of administrative influence spread only along the Siberian railway line. Therefore, such influence almost did not extend to the internal life of the provinces located at a distance from the railway line, and the people only needed order and the opportunity for a quiet existence.

Siberian village

Under such patriarchal conditions, revolutionary propaganda could only succeed in Siberia by force, which could not but cause resistance. And it inevitably arose. In June, Cossacks, volunteers and detachments of Czechoslovaks cleared the entire Siberian railway route from Chelyabinsk to Irkutsk of Bolsheviks.

After this, an irreconcilable struggle began between the parties, as a result of which the advantage was established in the power structure formed in Omsk, which relied on an armed force of about 40,000, of which half were from the Ural, Siberian and Orenburg Cossacks. Anti-Bolshevik rebel detachments in Siberia fought under a white and green flag, since “according to the resolution of the Emergency Siberian Regional Congress, the colors of the flag of autonomous Siberia were established as white and green - as a symbol of the snows and forests of Siberia.”

Flag of Siberia

Of course, all these centrifugal chimeras arose, first of all, from the impotence of the central government, which happened again in the early 90s. In addition to the national-geographical divide, the Bolsheviks managed to organize an internal split: the previously united Cossacks were divided into “red” and “white”. Some of the Cossacks, primarily young people and front-line soldiers, were deceived by the promises and promises of the Bolsheviks, and left to fight for the Soviets.

Red Cossacks

In the Southern Urals, the Red Guards, under the leadership of the Bolshevik worker V.K. Blucher, and the Red Orenburg Cossacks of the brothers Nikolai and Ivan Kashirin fought surrounded and retreated in battle from Vekhneuralsk to Beloretsk, and from there, repelling the attacks of the White Cossacks, they began a great campaign along the Ural Mountains near Kungur, to join the 3rd Red Army. Having fought along the rear of the whites for more than 1000 kilometers, the red fighters and Cossacks in the Askino area united with the red units.

From them, the 30th Infantry Division was formed, the commander of which was appointed Blucher, and the former Cossack squadrons Kashirins were appointed deputy and brigade commander. All three receive the newly established Order of the Red Banner, with Blucher receiving it at No. 1.

During this period, about 12 thousand Orenburg Cossacks fought on the side of Ataman Dutov, and up to 4 thousand Cossacks fought for Soviet power. The Bolsheviks created Cossack regiments, often on the basis of old regiments of the tsarist army. So, on the Don, the majority of the Cossacks of the 1st, 15th and 32nd Don Regiments went to the Red Army. In battles, the Red Cossacks emerged as the best fighting units of the Bolsheviks. In June, the Don Red partisans were consolidated into the 1st Socialist Cavalry Regiment (about 1000 sabers) led by Dumenko and his deputy Budyonny. In August, this regiment, replenished with cavalry from the Martyno-Orlovsky detachment, turned into the 1st Don Soviet Cavalry Brigade, led by the same commanders. Dumenko and Budyonny were the initiators of the creation of large cavalry formations in the Red Army.

Boris Mokeevich Dumenko

Since the summer of 1918, they persistently convinced the Soviet leadership of the need to create mounted divisions and corps. Their views were shared by K.E. Voroshilov, I.V. Stalin, A.I. Egorov and other leaders of the 10th Army. By order of the commander of the 10th Army K.E. Voroshilov No. 62 of November 28, 1918, Dumenko’s cavalry brigade was reorganized into the Consolidated Cavalry Division.

The commander of the 32nd Cossack regiment, military foreman Mironov, also unconditionally sided with the new government. The Cossacks elected him military commissar of the Ust-Medveditsky district revolutionary committee. In the spring of 1918, to fight the whites, Mironov organized several Cossack partisan detachments, which were then united into the 23rd division of the Red Army. Mironov was appointed division commander. In September 1918 - February 1919, he successfully and famously crushed the white cavalry near Tambov and Voronezh, for which he was awarded the highest award of the Soviet Republic - the Order of the Red Banner No. 3.

Philip Kuzmich Mironov

However, most of the Cossacks fought for the whites. The Bolshevik leadership saw that it was the Cossacks who made up the majority of the manpower of the white armies. This was especially typical for the south of Russia, where two-thirds of all Russian Cossacks were concentrated in the Don and Kuban. The civil war in the Cossack regions was fought with the most brutal methods; the extermination of prisoners and hostages was often practiced.

execution of captured Cossacks

Due to the small number of Red Cossacks, it seemed that all Cossacks were fighting with the rest of the non-Cossack population. By the end of 1918, it became obvious that in almost every army, approximately 80% of the combat-ready Cossacks were fighting the Bolsheviks and about 20% were fighting on the side of the Reds. On the fields of the civil war that broke out, Shkuro’s white Cossacks fought with Budyonny’s red Cossacks, Mironov’s red Cossacks fought with Mamantov’s white Cossacks, Dutov’s white Cossacks fought with Kashirin’s red Cossacks, and so on... A bloody whirlwind swept over the Cossack lands. The grief-stricken Cossack women said: “Divided into whites and reds and let’s chop each other down to the delight of the Jewish commissars.” This was only to the advantage of the Bolsheviks and the forces behind them. Such is the great Cossack tragedy. And she had her reasons. When the 3rd Extraordinary Circle of the Orenburg Cossack Army took place in Orenburg in September 1918, where the first results of the fight against the Soviets were summed up, Ataman of the 1st District K.A. Kargin, with brilliant simplicity and very accurately described the main sources and causes of Bolshevism among the Cossacks. “The Bolsheviks in Russia and in the army were a result of the fact that we have many poor people. And neither disciplinary regulations nor executions will eliminate the discord as long as we have poverty. Eliminate this poverty, give it the opportunity to live like a human being - and all these Bolshevisms and other “isms” will disappear.” However, it was already too late to philosophize and drastic punitive measures were planned at the Circle against supporters of the Bolsheviks, Cossacks, nonresidents and their families. It must be said that they were not much different from the punitive actions of the Reds. The gap among the Cossacks deepened. In addition to the Ural, Orenburg and Siberian Cossacks, Kolchak’s army included the Transbaikal and Ussuri Cossack troops, which found themselves under the patronage and support of the Japanese. Initially, the formation of the armed forces to fight against the Bolsheviks was based on the principle of voluntariness, but in August the mobilization of youth aged 19-20 was announced, and as a result, Kolchak’s army began to number up to 200,000 people.

By August 1918, forces numbering up to 120,000 people were deployed on the Western Front of Siberia alone. Units of the troops were distributed into three armies: the Siberian under the command of Gaida, who broke with the Czechs and was promoted to general by Admiral Kolchak, the Western under the command of the glorious Cossack general Khanzhin and the Southern under the command of the ataman of the Orenburg army, General Dutov. The Ural Cossacks, having driven back the Reds, fought from Astrakhan to Novonikolaevsk, occupying a front stretching 500-600 versts. Against these troops, the Reds had from 80 to 100,000 people on the Eastern Front. However, having strengthened the troops by forced mobilization, the Reds went on the offensive and occupied Kazan on September 9, Simbirsk on the 12th, and Samara on October 10. By the Christmas holidays, Ufa was taken by the Reds, the Siberian armies began to retreat to the east and occupy the passes of the Ural Mountains, where the armies were supposed to be replenished, put themselves in order and prepare for the spring offensive.

M.V. Frunze and V.I. Chapaev when crossing the river. White

At the end of 1918, Dutov's Southern Army, formed mainly from Cossacks of the Orenburg Cossack Army, also suffered heavy losses, and left Orenburg in January 1919.

In the south, in the summer of 1918, 25 ages were mobilized into the Don Army and there were 27,000 infantry, 30,000 cavalry, 175 guns, 610 machine guns, 20 aircraft, 4 armored trains in service, not counting the young standing army. By August the reorganization of the army was completed. The foot regiments had 2-3 battalions, 1000 bayonets and 8 machine guns in each battalion, the horse regiments were six hundred strong with 8 machine guns. The regiments were organized into brigades and divisions, divisions into corps, which were placed on 3 fronts: northern against Voronezh, eastern against Tsaritsyn and southeastern near the village of Velikoknyazheskaya. The special beauty and pride of the Don was the standing army of Cossacks of 19-20 years of age. It consisted of: 1st Don Cossack Division - 5 thousand swords, 1st Plastun Brigade - 8 thousand bayonets, 1st Rifle Brigade - 8 thousand bayonets, 1st Engineer Battalion - 1 thousand bayonets, technical troops - armored trains , airplanes, armored squads, etc. In total, up to 30 thousand excellent fighters.

A river flotilla of 8 ships was created. After bloody battles on July 27, the Don units went beyond the army in the north and occupied the city of Boguchar, Voronezh province. The Don Army was free from the Red Guard, but the Cossacks categorically refused to go further. With great difficulty, the ataman managed to carry out the Circle’s resolution on crossing the borders of the Don Army, which was expressed in the order. But it was a dead letter. The Cossacks said: “We will go if the Russians also go.” But the Russian Volunteer Army was firmly stuck in the Kuban and could not go north. Denikin refused the ataman. He declared that he must remain in the Kuban until he liberated the entire North Caucasus from the Bolsheviks.

Cossack regions of southern Russia

Under these conditions, the ataman looked carefully at Ukraine. As long as there was order in Ukraine, as long as there was friendship and alliance with the hetman, he was calm. The western border did not require a single soldier from the chieftain. There was a proper trade exchange with Ukraine. But there was no firm confidence that the hetman would survive. The hetman did not have an army; the Germans prevented him from creating one. There was a good division of Sich riflemen, several officer battalions, and a very smart hussar regiment. But these were ceremonial troops. There were a bunch of generals and officers who were appointed commanders of corps, divisions and regiments. They put on the original Ukrainian zhupans, issued the forelocks, hung crooked sabers, occupied the barracks, issued regulations with covers in Ukrainian and content in Russian, but there were no soldiers in the army. All order was ensured by German garrisons. Their menacing “Halt” silenced all the political mongrels.

Kaiser's army

However, the hetman understood that it was impossible to rely on German troops forever and sought a defensive alliance with the Don, Kuban, Crimea and the peoples of the Caucasus against the Bolsheviks. The Germans supported him in this. On October 20, the hetman and the ataman held negotiations at the Skorokhodovo station and sent a letter to the command of the Volunteer Army, outlining their proposals.

Pavel Petrovich Skoropadsky Pyotr Nikolaevich Krasnov

But the outstretched hand was rejected. So, the goals of Ukraine, the Don and the Volunteer Army had significant differences. The leaders of Ukraine and the Don considered the main goal to be the fight against the Bolsheviks, and the determination of the structure of Russia was postponed until victory. Denikin adhered to a completely different point of view. He believed that he was on the same path only with those who denied any autonomy and unconditionally shared the idea of ​​a united and indivisible Russia.

Anton Ivanovich Denikin

In the conditions of the Russian Troubles, this was his enormous epistemological, ideological, organizational and political mistake, which determined the sad fate of the white movement.

The chieftain was faced with the fact of harsh reality. The Cossacks refused to go beyond the Donskoy army. And they were right. Voronezh, Saratov and other peasants not only did not fight the Bolsheviks, but also went against the Cossacks. The Cossacks, not without difficulty, were able to cope with their Don workers, peasants and non-residents, but they could not defeat all of central Russia and they understood this perfectly well. The ataman had the only means to force the Cossacks to march on Moscow. It was necessary to give them a break from the privations of combat and then force them to join the Russian people's army advancing on Moscow. He asked for volunteers twice and was refused twice. Then he began to create a new Russian southern army with funds from Ukraine and the Don. But Denikin prevented this matter in every possible way, calling it a German idea. However, the ataman needed this army due to the extreme fatigue of the Don army and the decisive refusal of the Cossacks to march to Russia. In Ukraine there were personnel for this army. After the aggravation of relations between the Volunteer Army and the Germans and Skoropadsky, the Germans began to prevent the movement of volunteers to the Kuban and quite a lot of people accumulated in Ukraine who were ready to fight the Bolsheviks, but did not have such an opportunity. From the very beginning, the Kiev union “Our Motherland” became the main supplier of personnel for the southern army. The monarchical orientation of this organization sharply narrowed the social base of the army, since monarchical ideas were very unpopular among the people. Thanks to socialist propaganda, the word tsar was still a bugbear for many people. With the name of the tsar, the peasants inextricably linked the idea of ​​​​the harsh collection of taxes, the sale of the last little cow for debts to the state, the dominance of landowners and capitalists, gold-chasing officers and the officer’s stick. In addition, they were afraid of the return of the landowners and punishment for the ruin of their estates. Ordinary Cossacks did not want restoration, because the concept of monarchy was associated with universal, long-term, forced military service, the obligation to equip themselves at their own expense and maintain combat horses that were not needed on the farm. Cossack officers associated tsarism with ideas about ruinous “benefits.” The Cossacks liked their new independent system, they were pleased that they themselves were discussing issues of power, land and mineral resources.

The king and the monarchy were opposed to the concept of freedom. It is difficult to say what the intelligentsia wanted and what it feared, because it itself never knows. She is like that Baba Yaga who is “always against.” In addition, General Ivanov, also a monarchist, a very distinguished man, but already sick and elderly, took command of the southern army. As a result, little came of this venture.

And the Soviet government, suffering defeats everywhere, began in July 1918 to properly organize the Red Army. With the help of officers brought into it, scattered Soviet detachments were brought together into military formations. Military specialists were placed in command posts in regiments, brigades, divisions and corps. The Bolsheviks managed to create a split not only among the Cossacks, but also among the officers. It was divided into approximately three equal parts: for the whites, for the reds, and for no one. Here is another great tragedy.


Mother's tragedy. One son is for the whites, and the other for the reds

The Don Army had to fight against a militarily organized enemy. By August, more than 70,000 soldiers, 230 guns and 450 machine guns were concentrated against the Don Army. The enemy's numerical superiority in forces created a difficult situation for the Don. This situation was aggravated by political turmoil. On August 15, after the liberation of the entire territory of the Don from the Bolsheviks, a Great Military Circle was convened in Novocherkassk from the entire population of the Don. This was no longer the former “gray” Circle of Don’s salvation. The intelligentsia and semi-intelligentsia, public teachers, lawyers, clerks, clerks, and solicitors entered it, managed to capture the minds of the Cossacks, and the Circle was divided into districts, villages, and parties. At the Circle, from the very first meetings, opposition to Ataman Krasnov opened up, which had roots in the Volunteer Army.

Ataman was accused of his friendly relations with the Germans, his desire for firm independent power and independence. And indeed, the ataman contrasted Cossack chauvinism with Bolshevism, Cossack nationalism with internationalism, and Don independence with Russian imperialism. Very few people then understood the significance of Don separatism as a transitional phenomenon. Denikin did not understand this either. Everything on the Don irritated him: the anthem, the flag, the coat of arms, the ataman, the Circle, discipline, satiety, order, Don patriotism. He considered all this a manifestation of separatism and fought against the Don and Kuban with all methods. As a result, he chopped off the branch on which he was sitting. As soon as the civil war ceased to be national and popular, it became a class war and could not be successful for the whites due to the large number of the poorer class. First the peasants, and then the Cossacks, fell away from the Volunteer Army and the white movement and it died. They talk about the Cossacks betraying Denikin, but this is not true, quite the opposite. If Denikin had not betrayed the Cossacks, if he had not cruelly offended their young national feeling, they would not have left him. In addition, the decision made by the ataman and the Military Circle to continue the war outside the Don intensified anti-war propaganda on the part of the Reds, and ideas began to spread among the Cossack units that the ataman and the government were pushing the Cossacks to conquests that were alien to them outside the Don, the possession of which the Bolsheviks were not encroaching on. . The Cossacks wanted to believe that the Bolsheviks really would not touch the Don territory and that it was possible to come to an agreement with them. The Cossacks reasoned reasonably: “We liberated our lands from the Reds, let Russian soldiers and peasants lead the further fight against them, and we can only help them.”

In addition, for summer field work on the Don, workers were required, and because of this, the older ages had to be released and sent home, which greatly affected the size and combat effectiveness of the army. The bearded Cossacks firmly united and disciplined hundreds with their authority. But despite the machinations of the opposition, folk wisdom and national egoism prevailed on the Circle over the cunning attacks of political parties. The chieftain's policy was approved, and he himself was re-elected on September 12. Ataman firmly understood that Russia itself must be saved. He did not trust the Germans, much less the Allies. He knew that foreigners go to Russia not for Russia, but to snatch as much as possible from it. He also understood that Germany and France, for opposite reasons, needed a strong and powerful Russia, and England a weak, fragmented, federal one. He believed in Germany and France, he did not believe in England at all.

By the end of summer, the fighting on the border of the Don region centered around Tsaritsyn, which was also not part of the Don region. The defense there was led by the future Soviet leader I.V. Stalin, whose organizational abilities are now doubted only by the most ignorant and stubborn.

Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (Dzhugashvili)

Lulling the Cossacks to sleep with propaganda about the futility of their struggle outside the borders of the Don, the Bolsheviks concentrated large forces on this front. However, the first Red offensive was repulsed, and they retreated to Kamyshin and the lower Volga. While the Volunteer Army fought during the summer to clear the Kuban region from the army of paramedic Sorokin, the Don Army ensured its activities on all fronts against the Reds from Tsaritsyn to Taganrog. During the summer of 1918, the Don Army suffered heavy losses, up to 40% of the Cossacks and up to 70% of the officers. The quantitative superiority of the Reds and the vast front space did not allow the Cossack regiments to leave the front and go to the rear to rest. The Cossacks were in constant combat tension. Not only the people were tired, but the horse train was also exhausted. Difficult conditions and lack of proper hygiene began to cause infectious diseases, and typhus appeared among the troops. In addition, units of the Reds under the command of Zhloba, defeated in battles north of Stavropol, went towards Tsaritsyn. The appearance from the Caucasus of Sorokin's army, which had not been killed by volunteers, posed a threat from the flank and rear of the Don Army, which was waging a stubborn struggle against the garrison of 50,000 people occupying Tsaritsyn. With the onset of cold weather and general fatigue, the Don units began to retreat from Tsaritsyn.

But how were things in Kuban? The lack of weapons and fighters of the Volunteer Army was made up for with enthusiasm and daring. Across the open field, under hurricane fire, officer companies, striking the imagination of the enemy, moved in orderly chains and drove the Red troops ten times larger in number.

Officer's company attack

Successful battles, accompanied by the capture of a large number of prisoners, raised the spirits in the Kuban villages, and the Cossacks began to take up arms en masse. The Volunteer Army, which suffered heavy losses, was replenished with a large number of Kuban Cossacks, volunteers arriving from all over Russia and people from the partial mobilization of the population. The need for unified command of all forces fighting against the Bolsheviks was recognized by the entire command staff. In addition, it was necessary for the leaders of the White movement to take into account the all-Russian situation that had developed in the revolutionary process. Unfortunately, none of the leaders of the Good Army, who claimed the role of leaders on an all-Russian scale, possessed flexibility and dialectical philosophy. The dialectic of the Bolsheviks, who, in order to retain power, gave the Germans more than a third of the territory and population of European Russia, of course, could not serve as an example, but Denikin’s claims to the role of an immaculate and unyielding guardian of “one and indivisible Russia” in the conditions of the Troubles could only be ridiculous. In the conditions of a multifactorial and merciless struggle of “everyone against everyone,” he did not have the necessary flexibility and dialectics. Ataman Krasnov’s refusal to subordinate the administration of the Don region to Denikin was understood by him not only as the ataman’s personal vanity, but also as the independence of the Cossacks hidden in this.

All parts of the Russian Empire that sought to restore order on their own were considered by Denikin to be enemies of the white movement. The local authorities of Kuban also did not recognize Denikin, and punitive detachments began to be sent against them from the first days of the struggle. Military efforts were scattered, significant forces were diverted from the main goal. The main sections of the population, objectively supporting the whites, not only did not join the struggle, but became his opponents.

Cossacks join the Red Army

The front required a large number of male population, but it was also necessary to take into account the demands of internal work, and often the Cossacks who were at the front were released from units for certain periods of time. The Kuban government exempted some ages from mobilization, and General Denikin saw in this “dangerous preconditions and a manifestation of sovereignty.” The army was fed by the Kuban population. The Kuban government paid all the costs of supplying the Volunteer Army, which could not complain about the food supply. At the same time, according to the laws of war, the Volunteer Army appropriated to itself the right to all property seized from the Bolsheviks, cargo going to Red units, the right to requisition, and more. Other means of replenishing the treasury of the Good Army were indemnities imposed on villages that showed hostile actions towards it. To account for and distribute this property, General Denikin organized a commission of public figures from the military-industrial committee. The activities of this commission proceeded in such a way that a significant part of the cargo was spoiled, some was stolen, and there was abuse among the members of the commission that the commission was composed of mostly unprepared, useless, even harmful and ignorant people. The immutable law of any army is that everything beautiful, brave, heroic, noble goes to the front, and everything cowardly, shying away from battle, everything thirsting not for heroism and glory, but for profit and outward splendor, all speculators gather in the rear. People who have never seen a hundred-ruble ticket before are handling millions of rubles, they are dizzy from this money, they sell “loot” here, they have their heroes here. The front is ragged, barefoot, naked and hungry, and here people are sitting in cleverly sewn Circassian caps, colored caps, jackets and riding breeches. Here they drink wine, jingle gold and politick.

There are infirmaries with doctors, nurses and nurses. There is love and jealousy here. This was the case in all armies, and this was also the case in the white armies. Along with ideological people, selfish people joined the white movement. These selfish people settled firmly in the rear and flooded Ekaterinodar, Rostov and Novocherkassk. Their behavior hurt the sight and hearing of the army and the population. In addition, it was not clear to General Denikin why the Kuban government, liberating the region, replaced the rulers with the same people who were under the Bolsheviks, renaming them from commissars to atamans. He did not understand that the business qualities of each Cossack were determined in the conditions of Cossack democracy by the Cossacks themselves. However, not being able to restore order himself in the regions liberated from Bolshevik rule, General Denikin remained irreconcilable with the local Cossack order and with local national organizations that lived by their own customs in pre-revolutionary times. They were classified as hostile “independents,” and punitive measures were taken against them. All these reasons could not help attract the population to the side of the white army. At the same time, General Denikin, both during the Civil War and in emigration, thought a lot, but to no avail, about the completely inexplicable (from his point of view) epidemic spread of Bolshevism. Moreover, the Kuban army, territorially and by origin, was divided into an army of Black Sea Cossacks, resettled by order of Empress Catherine II after the destruction of the Dnieper army, and the Lineians, whose population consisted of settlers from the Don region and from the communities of the Volga Cossacks.

These two units, constituting one army, were different in character. Both parts contained their historical past. The Black Sea people were the heirs of the army of the Dnieper Cossacks and Zaporozhye, whose ancestors, due to their many times demonstrated political instability, were destroyed as an army. Moreover, the Russian authorities only completed the destruction of the Dnieper Army, and it was started by Poland, under the rule of whose kings the Dnieper Cossacks were for a long time. This unstable orientation of the Little Russians has brought many tragedies in the past; it is enough to recall the inglorious fate and death of their last talented hetman Mazepa. This violent past and other features of the Little Russian character imposed strong specifics on the behavior of the Kuban people in the civil war. The Kuban Rada split into two currents: Ukrainian and independent. The leaders of the Rada, Bych and Ryabovol, proposed merging with Ukraine; the independentists stood for the establishment of a federation in which Kuban would be completely independent. Both of them dreamed and sought to free themselves from Denikin’s tutelage. He, in turn, considered them all traitors. The moderate part of the Rada, front-line soldiers and Ataman Filimonov stuck to the volunteers. They wanted to free themselves from the Bolsheviks with the help of volunteers. But Ataman Filimonov had little authority among the Cossacks; they had other heroes: Pokrovsky, Shkuro, Ulagai, Pavlyuchenko.

Victor Leonidovich Pokrovsky Andrey Grigorievich Shkuro

The Kuban people liked them very much, but their behavior was difficult to predict. The behavior of numerous Caucasian nationalities was even more unpredictable, which determined the great specificity of the civil war in the Caucasus. Frankly speaking, with all their zigzags and twists, the Reds used all this specificity much better than Denikin.

Many white hopes were associated with the name of Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich Romanov. Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich lived all this time in Crimea, without openly participating in political events. He was greatly depressed by the thought that by sending his telegram to the sovereign with a request for abdication, he contributed to the death of the monarchy and the destruction of Russia. The Grand Duke wanted to make amends for this and take part in military work. However, in response to General Alekseev’s lengthy letter, the Grand Duke responded with only one phrase: “Be at peace”... and General Alekseev died on September 25. The high command and the civilian part of the administration of the liberated territories were completely united in the hands of General Denikin.

Heavy continuous fighting exhausted both sides fighting in the Kuban. The Reds also had a struggle among the high command. The commander of the 11th Army, former paramedic Sorokin, was removed, and command passed to the Revolutionary Military Council. Finding no support in the army, Sorokin fled from Pyatigorsk in the direction of Stavropol. On October 17, he was caught, put in prison, where he was killed without any trial. After the murder of Sorokin, as a result of internal squabbles among the Red leaders and from impotent rage at the stubborn resistance of the Cossacks, also wanting to intimidate the population, a demonstrative execution of 106 hostages was carried out in Mineralnye Vody. Among those executed were General Radko-Dmitriev, a Bulgarian in Russian service, and General Ruzsky, who so persistently persuaded the last Russian Emperor to abdicate the throne. After the verdict, General Ruzsky was asked the question: “Do you now recognize the great Russian revolution?” He replied: “I see only one great robbery.” It is worth adding to this that the beginning of the robbery was laid by him at the headquarters of the Northern Front, where violence was carried out against the will of the emperor, who was forced to abdicate the throne.

abdication of Nicholas II

As for the bulk of the former officers located in the North Caucasus, they turned out to be absolutely inert to the events taking place, showing no desire to serve either the whites or the reds, which decided their fate. Almost all of them were destroyed “just in case” by the Reds.

In the Caucasus, the class struggle was heavily implicated in the national question. Among the numerous peoples who inhabited it, Georgia had the greatest political importance, and in an economic sense, Caucasian oil. Politically and territorially, Georgia found itself primarily under pressure from Turkey. Soviet power, but to the Brest-Litovsk Peace, ceded Kars, Ardahan and Batum to Turkey, which Georgia could not recognize. Turkey recognized the independence of Georgia, but presented territorial demands even more severe than the demands of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty. Georgia refused to carry them out, the Turks went on the offensive and occupied Kars, heading towards Tiflis. Not recognizing Soviet power, Georgia sought to ensure the country's independence with armed force and began the formation of an army. But Georgia was ruled by politicians,

who took an active part after the revolution as part of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies. These same individuals now ingloriously tried to build the Georgian army on the same principles that at one time led the Russian army to disintegration. In the spring of 1918, the struggle for Caucasian oil began. The German command removed a cavalry brigade and several battalions from the Bulgarian front and transported them to Batum and Poti, which was leased by Germany for 60 years. However, the Turks were the first to appear in Baku and the fanaticism of Turkish Mohammedanism, the ideas and propaganda of the Reds, the power and money of the British and Germans clashed there. In Transcaucasia, since ancient times there was irreconcilable hostility between Armenians and Azerbaijanis (then they were called Turk-Tatars). After the Soviets established power, centuries-old hostilities were intensified by religion and politics. Two camps were created: the Soviet-Armenian proletariat and the Turkish-Tatars. Back in March 1918, one of the Soviet-Armenian regiments, returning from Persia, seized power in Baku and massacred entire neighborhoods of the Turk-Tatars, killing up to 10,000 people. For several months, power in the city remained in the hands of the Red Armenians. At the beginning of September, a Turkish corps under the command of Mursal Pasha arrived in Baku, dispersed the Baku commune and occupied the city.

execution of 26 Baku communards

With the arrival of the Turks, the massacre of the Armenian population began. The Muslims were triumphant.

Germany, after the Brest-Litovsk Treaty, strengthened itself on the shores of the Azov and Black Seas, to the ports of which part of their fleet was introduced. In the coastal cities of the Black Sea, German sailors, who sympathetically followed the unequal struggle of the Good Army with the Bolsheviks, offered their help to the army headquarters, which was contemptuously rejected by Denikin. Georgia, separated from Russia by a mountain range, had a connection with the northern part of the Caucasus through a narrow strip of coast that made up the Black Sea province. Having annexed the Sukhumi district to its territory, Georgia deployed an armed detachment under the command of General Mazniev to Tuapse by September. This was a fatal decision when the yeast of the national interests of the newly emerged states with all their severity and intractability was poured into the Civil War. The Georgians sent a detachment of 3,000 people with 18 guns against the Volunteer Army towards Tuapse. On the coast, the Georgians began to build fortifications with a front to the north, and a small German landing force landed in Sochi and Adler. General Denikin began to reproach the representatives of Georgia for the difficult and humiliating situation of the Russian population on the territory of Georgia, the theft of Russian state property, the invasion and occupation by the Georgians, together with the Germans, of the Black Sea province. To which Georgia replied: “The volunteer army is a private organization... Under the current situation, the Sochi district should become part of Georgia...”. In this dispute between the leaders of the Dobrarmia and Georgia, the government of Kuban was entirely on the side of Georgia. The Kuban people had friendly relations with Georgia. It soon became clear that the Sochi district was occupied by Georgia with the consent of Kuban and that there were no misunderstandings between Kuban and Georgia.
Such turbulent events that developed in Transcaucasia did not leave any room there for the problems of the Russian Empire and its last stronghold, the Volunteer Army. Therefore, General Denikin finally turned his gaze to the East, where the government of Admiral Kolchak was formed. An embassy was sent to him, and then Denikin recognized Admiral Kolchak as the Supreme Ruler of national Russia.

Meanwhile, the defense of the Don continued on the front from Tsaritsyn to Taganrog. All summer and autumn, the Don Army, without any outside help, fought heavy and constant battles on the main directions from Voronezh and Tsaritsyn. Instead of the Red Guard gangs, the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (RKKA), which had just been created through the efforts of military experts, was already fighting against the people's Don Army. By the end of 1918, the Red Army already had 299 regular regiments, including 97 regiments on the eastern front against Kolchak, 38 regiments on the northern front against the Finns and Germans, 65 regiments on the western front against the Polish-Lithuanian troops, 99 regiments on the southern front, of which there were 44 regiments on the Don front, 5 regiments on the Astrakhan front, 28 regiments on the Kursk-Bryansk front, and 22 regiments against Denikin and Kuban. The army was commanded by the Revolutionary Military Council, headed by Bronstein (Trotsky), and the Defense Council, headed by Ulyanov (Lenin), stood at the head of all military efforts of the country.

creators of the Red Army (Workers' and Peasants' Red Army)

The headquarters of the Southern Front in Kozlov received in October the task of wiping out the Don Cossacks from the face of the earth and occupying Rostov and Novocherkassk at all costs. The front was commanded by General Sytin. The front consisted of Sorokin's 11th Army, headquarters in Nevinnomyssk, operating against volunteers and Kuban, Antonov's 12th Army, headquarters in Astrakhan, Voroshilov's 10th Army, headquarters in Tsaritsyn, General Egorov's 9th Army, headquarters in Balashov, 8th Army of General Chernavin, headquarters in Voronezh. Sorokin, Antonov and Voroshilov were remnants of the previous electoral system, and Sorokin’s fate had already been decided, a replacement was being sought for Voroshilov, and all the other commanders were former staff officers and generals of the imperial army. Thus, the situation on the Don front was developing in a very formidable manner. The ataman and the army commanders, Generals Denisov and Ivanov, were aware that the times when one Cossack was enough for ten Red Guards were over and understood that the period of “handicraft” operations was over. The Don army was preparing to fight back. The offensive was stopped, the troops retreated from the Voronezh province and consolidated on a fortified strip along the border of the Don Army. Relying on the left flank on Ukraine, occupied by the Germans, and on the right on the inaccessible Trans-Volga region, the ataman hoped to hold the defense until spring, during which time he had strengthened and strengthened his army. But man proposes, but God disposes.

In November, extremely unfavorable events of a general political nature occurred for Don. The Allies defeated the Central Powers, Kaiser Wilhelm abdicated the throne, and a revolution and disintegration of the army began in Germany. German troops began to leave Russia. German soldiers did not obey their commanders; they were already ruled by their Soviets of Soldiers' Deputies. Just recently, stern German soldiers stopped crowds of workers and soldiers in Ukraine with the formidable “Halt,” but now they obediently allowed themselves to be disarmed by Ukrainian peasants. And then Ostap suffered. Ukraine began to boil, seethed with uprisings, each volost had its own “fathers” and the civil war rolled wildly across the country. Hetmanism, Gaidama, Petliurism, Makhnovism... All this was heavily implicated in Ukrainian nationalism and separatism. Many works have been written about this period and dozens of films have been made, including incredibly popular ones. If you remember “Wedding in Malinovka” or “Little Red Devils”, you can vividly imagine... the future of Ukraine.

And then Petliura, uniting with Vinnichenko, raised a revolt of the Sich Riflemen.

Sich Riflemen

There was no one to suppress the rebellion. The hetman did not have his own army. The German Council of Deputies concluded a truce with Petliura, who drove up the trains and German soldiers loaded into them, abandoning their positions and weapons, and set off for their homeland. Under these conditions, the French command on the Black Sea promised the hetman 3-4 divisions. But in Versailles, on the Thames and the Potomac they looked at it completely differently. Big politicians saw a united Russia as a threat to Persia, India, the Middle and Far East. They wanted to see Russia destroyed, fragmented and burning over a slow fire. In Soviet Russia they followed the events with fear and trembling. Objectively, the victory of the Allies was the defeat of Bolshevism. Both the commissars and the Red Army soldiers understood this. Just as the Don people said that they could not fight against all of Russia, so the Red Army soldiers understood that they could not fight against the whole world. But there was no need to fight. Versailles did not want to save Russia, did not want to share the fruits of victory with it, so they postponed assistance. There was another reason. Although the British and French said that Bolshevism is a disease of defeated armies, but they are the victors and their armies are not touched by this terrible disease. But that was not the case. Their soldiers no longer wanted to fight with anyone, their armies were already corroded by the same terrible gangrene of war fatigue as the others. And when the allies did not come to Ukraine, the Bolsheviks began to hope for victory. Hastily formed squads of officers and cadets were left to defend Ukraine and the hetman. The Hetman's troops were defeated, the Ukrainian Council of Ministers surrendered Kyiv to the Petliurists, bargaining for themselves and the officer squads the right to evacuation to the Don and Kuban. The hetman escaped.
Petlyura’s return to power was colorfully described in the novel “Days of the Turbins” by Mikhail Bulgakov: chaos, murder, violence against Russian officers and simply against Russians in Kyiv. And then the stubborn struggle against Russia, not only against the red one, but also against the white one. The Petliurites carried out terrible terror, massacres and genocide of Russians in the occupied territories. The Soviet command, having learned about this, moved Antonov’s army to Ukraine, which easily defeated the Petliura gangs and occupied Kharkov, and then Kiev. Petlyura fled to Kamenets-Podolsk. In Ukraine, after the Germans left, huge reserves of military equipment remained, which went to the Reds. This gave them the opportunity to form the Ninth Army from the Ukrainian side and send it against the Don from the west. With the departure of German units from the borders of the Don and Ukraine, the situation of the Don became complicated in two respects: the army was deprived of replenishment with weapons and military supplies, and a new, western front stretching 600 miles was added. Ample opportunities opened up for the command of the Red Army to take advantage of the prevailing conditions, and they decided to first defeat the Don Army and then destroy the Kuban and Volunteer armies. All the attention of the ataman of the Don army was now turned to the western borders. But there was faith that the allies would come and help out. The intelligentsia was lovingly, enthusiastically disposed towards the allies and was looking forward to them. Thanks to the wide spread of Anglo-French education and literature, the British and French, despite the remoteness of these countries, were closer to the Russian educated heart than the Germans. And even more so the Russians, because this social layer is traditionally and firmly convinced that in our Fatherland there cannot be prophets by definition. The common people, including the Cossacks, had other priorities in this regard. The Germans enjoyed sympathy and were liked by ordinary Cossacks as a serious and hardworking people; ordinary people looked at the Frenchman as a frivolous creature with some contempt, and at the Englishman with great distrust. The Russian people were firmly convinced that during the period of Russian successes, “the Englishwoman always does shit.” It soon became clear that the Cossacks’ faith in their allies turned out to be an illusion and a chimera.

Denikin had an ambivalent attitude towards Don. While Germany was doing well, and supplies were coming to the Good Army from Ukraine through the Don, Denikin’s attitude towards Ataman Krasnov was cold, but restrained. But as soon as news of the Allied victory became known, everything changed. General Denikin began to take revenge on the ataman for his independence and show that everything was now in his hands. On November 13, in Yekaterinodar, Denikin convened a meeting of representatives of the Good Army, Don and Kuban, at which he demanded that 3 main issues be resolved. About unified power (dictatorship of General Denikin), unified command and unified representation before the allies. The meeting did not come to an agreement, and relations worsened even more, and with the arrival of the allies, a cruel intrigue began against the ataman and the Donskoy army. Ataman Krasnov has long been presented by Denikin’s agents among the Allies as a figure of “German orientation.” All the chieftain's attempts to change this characteristic were unsuccessful. In addition, when meeting foreigners, Krasnov always ordered the old Russian anthem to be played. At the same time, he said: “I have two possibilities. Either play “God Save the Tsar” in such cases, without attaching importance to the words, or a funeral march. I deeply believe in Russia, that’s why I can’t play a funeral march. I'm playing the Russian anthem." For this, Ataman was also considered a monarchist abroad. As a result, Don received no help from the allies. But the ataman had no time to fend off intrigues. The military situation changed dramatically, and the Donskoy army was threatened with death. Attaching particular importance to the territory of the Don, by November the Soviet government concentrated four armies of 125,000 soldiers with 468 guns and 1,337 machine guns against the Don Army. The rear of the Red armies were reliably covered by railway lines, which ensured the transfer of troops and maneuvering, and the Red units increased in number. The winter turned out to be early and cold. With the onset of cold weather, diseases developed and typhus began. The 60 thousand-strong Don Army began to melt and freeze numerically, and there was nowhere to take reinforcements.

The manpower resources on the Don were completely exhausted, the Cossacks were mobilized from 18 to 52 years old, and even older ones acted as volunteers. It was clear that with the defeat of the Don Army, the Volunteer Army would also cease to exist. But the Don Cossacks held the front, which allowed General Denikin, taking advantage of the difficult situation on the Don, to conduct a behind-the-scenes struggle against Ataman Krasnov through members of the Military Circle. At the same time, the Bolsheviks resorted to their tried and tested method - the most tempting promises, behind which there was nothing but unheard of treachery. But these promises sounded very attractive and humane. The Bolsheviks promised the Cossacks peace and complete inviolability of the borders of the Don Army if the latter laid down their arms and went home.

They pointed out that the Allies would not help them; on the contrary, they were helping the Bolsheviks. The fight against enemy forces 2-3 times superior depressed the morale of the Cossacks, and the Reds’ promise to establish peaceful relations in some parts began to find supporters. Individual units began to leave the front, exposing it, and finally, the regiments of the Upper Don District decided to enter into negotiations with the Reds and stopped resistance. The truce was concluded on the basis of self-determination and friendship of peoples. Many Cossacks went home. Through gaps in the front, the Reds penetrated into the deep rear of the defending units and, without any pressure, the Cossacks of the Khopyorsky district rolled back. The Don Army, leaving the northern districts, retreated to the line of the Seversky Donets, surrendering village after village to the red Mironov Cossacks. The ataman did not have a single free Cossack; everything was sent to defend the western front. A threat arose over Novocherkassk. Only volunteers or allies could save the situation.

By the time the front of the Don Army collapsed, the regions of Kuban and the North Caucasus had already been liberated from the Reds. By November 1918, the armed forces in Kuban consisted of 35 thousand Kuban residents and 7 thousand volunteers. These forces were free, but General Denikin was in no hurry to provide assistance to the exhausted Don Cossacks. The situation and the allies required unified command. But not only the Cossacks, but also the Cossack officers and generals did not want to obey the tsarist generals. This conflict had to be resolved somehow. Under pressure from the allies, General Denikin invited the ataman and the Don government to gather for a meeting in order to clarify the relationship between the Don and the command of the Don Army.

On December 26, 1918, Don commanders Denisov, Polyakov, Smagin, Ponomarev on the one hand and generals Denikin, Dragomirov, Romanovsky and Shcherbachev on the other gathered for a meeting in Torgovaya. The meeting was opened by a speech by General Denikin. Beginning by outlining the broad prospects of the fight against the Bolsheviks, he urged those present to forget personal grievances and insults. The issue of unified command for the entire command staff was a vital necessity, and it was clear to everyone that all armed forces, incomparably smaller in comparison with enemy units, must be united under one common leadership and directed towards one goal: the destruction of the center of Bolshevism and the occupation of Moscow. The negotiations were very difficult and constantly reached a dead end. There were too many differences between the command of the Volunteer Army and the Cossacks, in the field of politics, tactics and strategy. But still, with great difficulty and great concessions, Denikin managed to subjugate the Don Army.

During these difficult days, the chieftain accepted the Allied military mission led by General Pul. They inspected the troops in positions and in reserve, factories, workshops, and stud farms. The more Pul saw, the more he realized that immediate help was needed. But in London there was a completely different opinion. After his report, Poole was removed from leadership of the mission in the Caucasus and replaced by General Briggs, who did nothing without command from London. But there were no orders to help the Cossacks. England needed a Russia weakened, exhausted and plunged into permanent turmoil. The French mission, instead of helping, presented the ataman and the Don government with an ultimatum, in which it demanded the complete subordination of the ataman and the Don government to the French command on the Black Sea and full compensation for all losses of French citizens (read coal miners) in the Donbass. Under these conditions, persecution against the ataman and the Donskoy army continued in Yekaterinodar. General Denikin maintained contacts and conducted constant negotiations with the Chairman of the Circle, Kharlamov, and other figures from the opposition to the Ataman. However, understanding the seriousness of the situation of the Don Army, Denikin sent Mai-Maevsky’s division to the Mariupol area and 2 more Kuban divisions were echeloned and awaited the order to march. But there was no order; Denikin was waiting for the Circle’s decision regarding Ataman Krasnov.

The Great Military Circle met on February 1st. This was no longer the same circle as it was on August 15 in the days of victories. The faces were the same, but the expression was not the same. Then all the front-line soldiers had shoulder straps, orders and medals. Now all the Cossacks and junior officers were without shoulder straps. The circle, represented by its gray part, democratized and played like the Bolsheviks. On February 2, Krug expressed no confidence in the commander and chief of staff of the Don Army, Generals Denisov and Polyakov. In response, Ataman Krasnov was offended for his comrades-in-arms and resigned from his position as Ataman. The circle did not accept her at first. But behind the scenes, the dominant opinion was that without the resignation of the ataman, there would be no help from the allies and Denikin. After this, the Circle accepted the resignation. In his place, General Bogaevsky was elected ataman. On February 3, General Denikin visited the Circle, where he was greeted with thunderous applause. Now the Volunteer, Don, Kuban, Terek armies and the Black Sea Fleet were united under his command under the name of the Armed Forces of the South of Russia (AFSR).

The truce between the Severodonon Cossacks and the Bolsheviks lasted, but not for long. Just a few days after the truce, the Reds appeared in the villages and began to carry out savage massacres among the Cossacks. They began to take away grain, steal livestock, kill disobedient people and commit violence. In response, an uprising began on February 26, sweeping the villages of Kazanskaya, Migulinskaya, Veshenskaya and Elanskaya.

The defeat of Germany, the elimination of Ataman Krasnov, the creation of the AFSR and the uprising of the Cossacks began a new stage in the fight against the Bolsheviks in the south of Russia. But that's a completely different story.

Policy of the Donburo of the RCP(b) towards the Cossacks during the Civil War

The situation in Soviet Russia during the civil war largely depended on the situation on the outskirts, including on the Don, where the largest detachment of the “most organized and therefore most significant” force of the non-proletarian masses of Russia - the Cossacks - was concentrated.

The origins of the Cossack policy of the Bolsheviks date back to 1917, when V.I. Lenin warned about the possibility of forming a “Russian Vendée” on the Don. Although the Cossacks generally adhered to a position of neutrality during the revolution in October 1917, some of its groups already took part in the fight against Soviet power. V.I. Lenin considered the Cossacks to be a privileged peasantry, capable of acting as a reactionary mass if their privileges were infringed. But this does not mean that the Cossacks were considered by Lenin as a single mass. Lenin noted that it was fragmented by differences in the size of land ownership, in payments, in the conditions of medieval use of land for service.

The appeal of the Rostov Council of Workers' Deputies said: Again we remember 1905, when the black reaction rode out on the Cossacks. Again the Cossacks are sent against the people, again they want to make the word “Cossack” the most hated for the worker and peasant... Again the Don Cossacks gain the shameful glory of people’s executioners, again it becomes a shame for the revolutionary Cossacks to bear the Cossack title... So throw it off, brother villagers , take over the power of the Kaledins and Bogaevskys and join your brothers, soldiers, peasants and workers.

The civil war, as a sharp aggravation of class contradictions in specific historical conditions, could hardly be prevented then. General Kaledin, Ataman of the Don Army, rose up to fight the revolution at noon on October 25, i.e. even before the opening of the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies and its adoption of historical decrees that shook the whole of Russia. Following him, the overthrown Prime Minister of the Provisional Government Kerensky, the Cossack General Krasnov, and the atamans of the Cossack troops of the Kuban, Orenburg, and Terek regions, the Central Rada of Ukraine, rebelled against Soviet power. General Alekseev in Novocherkassk launched the formation of a volunteer army. Thus, a powerful center of counter-revolution arose in the south of the country. The Soviet government sent armed forces led by Antonov-Ovseyenko to defeat him.

All eyewitnesses and contemporaries viewed these battles as a civil war. In particular, this is how they were then qualified by the head of the Soviet government created by the revolution, V.I. Lenin. Already on October 29, 1917, he explained that “the political situation has now been reduced to a military one,” and at the beginning of November he pointed out: “An insignificant handful has started a civil war.” On November 28, he signed a document with the expressive title “Decree on the arrest of the leaders of the civil war against the revolution.” The Soviets were entrusted with the responsibility of special supervision over the Cadet Party due to its connection with ardent counter-revolutionaries. The resolution of December 3 stated: under the leadership of the Cadets, a fierce civil war began “against the very foundations of the workers’ and peasants’ revolution.”

• On February 2, 1918, “Free Don” reported that in Novonikolevskaya the peasants decided to destroy the Cossack class and take away the land from the Cossacks. The peasants are waiting for the Bolsheviks as their saviors, who will bring freedom to the peasants and, more importantly, land. On this basis, relations between them and the Cossacks are worsening every day, and, apparently, heroic measures will be required to prevent civil massacre on the Quiet Don.
• The year 1918 was a turning point in the development of a number of social, economic and political processes that were intertwined in Russia into a rather intricate knot. The collapse of the empire continued and this process reached its lowest point. In the country as a whole, the state of the economy was catastrophic, and although the 1918 harvest was above average, famine was raging in many cities.

From the end of February to the end of March 1918, a kind of split occurred on the Don between the politically active wealthy Cossacks and the Don service elite. Active supporters of the anti-Bolshevik struggle created the “Detachment of Free Don Cossacks” and the Foot Partisan Cossack Regiment in order to retain the necessary officer and partisan personnel by the time the Don Cossacks awakened. The idea of ​​uniting and opposing the Soviets to all anti-Bolshevik forces in the detachment was absent. The detachments acted separately for purely opportunistic reasons.

In February 1918, the Military Revolutionary Committee, actually headed by S.I. Syrtsov, pursued an agreement with the working Cossacks. As a result of this policy - the creation of the Don Soviet Republic. The Cossack Committee under the All-Russian Central Executive Committee sent more than 100 agitators from the “Defense of the Rights of Labor Cossacks” detachment to the Don. Their task is to organize Councils of Cossack Deputies in the Don Region. By April, about 120 of them had been created in cities, villages and farmsteads. However, the acceptance of Soviet power was far from unconditional.

The first recorded armed clash with Soviet power was on March 21, 1918 - the Cossacks of the village of Lugansk repelled 34 arrested officers. On March 31, a rebellion broke out in the Suvorovskaya village of the 2nd Don District, and on April 2 - in the Yegorlykskaya village. With the onset of spring, contradictions in rural areas intensified. The bulk of the Cossacks, as usual, hesitated at first. When peasants tried to divide the land without waiting for the land issue to be resolved through legislation, the Cossacks even appealed to the regional Soviet authorities. In the north of the region, the Cossacks reacted painfully even to the seizure of landowners' lands by peasants. Further developments of events put the majority of the Cossacks in direct opposition to Soviet power.

“In some places, a violent seizure of land begins ...”, “The non-resident peasantry began to cultivate ... military reserve land and surplus land in the yurts of rich southern villages,” Peasants who rented land from the Cossacks “stopped paying rent.” The authorities, instead of smoothing out the contradictions, set a course to fight the “kulak elements of the Cossacks.”

Due to the fact that nonresident peasants stopped paying rent and began to use the land for free, part of the Cossack poor, who rented out the land, also recoiled to the side of the anti-Bolshevik forces. The refusal of out-of-towners to pay rent deprived her of a significant part of her income.

The growing struggle exacerbated the contradictions within the Cossacks, and in April 1918, the Bolshevik Cossack V.S. Kovalev, characterizing the relationship between the Cossack poor and the elite, stated: “When Soviet troops went to fight Kaledin, this gap was not noticeable, but now she showed up."

Thus, by May 1918, a mass anti-Bolshevik movement was emerging in one of the regions of southern Russia - on the Don. The reasons for the mass uprising and mass resistance were various. All those changes in the social, political and agrarian structure that took place in Central Russia were not acceptable to the Don Cossacks, who preferred armed struggle. The Cossacks are rising up to fight initially defensively, from a military point of view this doomed them to defeat. The logic of the rebels was as follows: “The Bolsheviks are destroying the Cossacks, the intelligentsia, like the communists, are trying to abolish us, but the Russian people don’t even think about us. Let’s go recklessly - we’ll either die or we’ll live: everyone has decided to destroy us, we’ll try to fight back.”

In June 1918, the split and class struggle in the Russian countryside reached its peak. On the Don, an outbreak of class struggle led to the transition of the Cossacks, incl. and the poor, in the southern districts on the side of the whites, in the northern, more homogeneous districts in terms of class and estate, the Cossacks were inclined to neutrality, but were subject to mobilization. This turn of events slowed down the political divisions within the classes.”

“The peasantry on the Don, more unanimously than anywhere else in Russia, was entirely on the side of the Soviets.” The lower Cossack villages (Bessergenevskaya, Melekhovskaya, Semikarakorskaya, Nagaevskaya, etc.) passed sentences on the eviction of nonresidents. There were exceptions: in May August 1918, 417 non-residents who participated in the fight against the Bolsheviks were accepted into the Cossacks, 1,400 sentences expelled Cossacks from the class for acts directly opposite, and 300 sentences were passed on eviction from the region. And yet the war acquired class overtones.

Despite all their fighting qualities, the Cossack rebels, as in the times of the peasant wars, having liberated their village, did not want to go further, and “it was not possible to raise them to vigorously pursue the enemy. The rebels wanted to fight the Bolsheviks, but had nothing against the Soviets.” As contemporaries believed, “when rebelling, the Cossacks thought least of all about the structure of their state. While rebelling, they did not forget for a minute that peace could be made as soon as the Soviet government agreed not to disturb their life in the village.”

Completely in the spirit of the times were the words of the Chairman of the Moscow Council P. Smidovich, spoken in September 1918 from the rostrum of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee: “This war is not being waged to lead to an agreement or to subjugate, this is a war of destruction. There can be no other civil war.” Terror as a state policy became a logical natural step in such a struggle.

In the fall of 1918, the Cossack forces were split: 18% of combat-ready Cossacks ended up in the ranks of the Red Army, 82% in the Don Army. Among those who went to the Bolsheviks, the presence of the poor was clearly visible. The forces of the Don Army were strained. In the October battles, 40% of the Cossacks and 80% of the officers dropped out of its ranks.

Having confirmed in practice in the spring and summer of 1918 that they were incompatible with them, the Soviets, led by the RCP(b), in the fall of 1918 set a course for their complete defeat: “The government on the Don was already being played when tendencies to flirt with Cossack federalist desires were revealed . Over the course of a year, the civil war on the Don managed to quite sharply delimit and separate revolutionary elements from counter-revolutionary ones. And strong Soviet power must rely only on economically true revolutionary elements, and the dark counter-revolutionary elements must be suppressed by Soviet power with its strength, its power, enlightened with its agitation and proletarianized with its economic policy.”

The Donburo took a course of ignoring the specific features of the Cossacks. In particular, the elimination of the “Cossack-police” division of the region into districts began; part of the territory was transferred to neighboring provinces. Syrtsov wrote that these steps mark the beginning of the abolition of the old form under the cover of which the “Russian Vendée” lived. In the educated regions, revolutionary committees, tribunals and military commissariats were created, which were supposed to ensure the effectiveness of the new policy.

At the beginning of January 1919, the Red Army launched a general offensive against the Cossack Don, which was then experiencing a stage of agony, and at the end of the same month the notorious circular letter from the Organizing Bureau of the Bolshevik Central Committee was sent to the localities. A merciless bloody ax fell on the heads of the Cossacks...”

The January (1919) anti-Cossack actions served as an expression of the general policy of Bolshevism towards the Cossacks. And its very foundations received ideological and theoretical development long before 1919. The foundation was formed by the works of Lenin, his associates and the resolutions of Bolshevik congresses and conferences. The existing, far from flawless ideas about the Cossacks as opponents of bourgeois reforms received absolutization in them and eventually molded into indisputable dogmas about the Cossacks as the backbone of the Vendean forces of Russia. Guided by the latter, the Bolsheviks, having seized power and following the formal logic of things, led - and could not help but lead - the line to eradicate the Cossacks. And after they faced the furious Soviet destiny and the attacks of the Cossacks on them, this line acquired bitterness and wild hatred.

Don fought and the government took unpopular measures. On October 5, 1918, an order was issued: “The entire amount of bread, food and feed, from the current harvest of 1918, past years and the future harvest of 1919, minus the reserve necessary for food and household needs of the owner, is received (from the time the grain was taken to accounting) at the disposal of the All-Great Don Army and can be alienated only through the food authorities.”

The Cossacks were asked to hand over the harvest themselves at a price of 10 rubles per pood until May 15, 1919. The villages were dissatisfied with this resolution. The last straw was the offensive of Soviet troops against Krasnov on the Southern Front, which began on January 4, 1919, and the beginning of the collapse of the Don Army.

In August 1918, People's Commissar of the Don Soviet Republic for Military Affairs E.A. Trifonov pointed out mass transitions from camp to camp. With the onset of counter-revolutionary forces, the Don government lost authority and territory. The Cossack department of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee tried to organize the Cossacks who took the side of Soviet power. On September 3, 1918, the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR issued a decree on the creation of the “Marching Circle of the Don Army” of the revolutionary Cossack government. “To convene the Marching Circle of the Soviet Don Army - a military government vested with full power on the Don... The Marching Circle... includes representatives of the Don Soviet regiments, as well as farms and villages freed from officer and landowner power.

But at that time, Soviet power on the Don did not last long. After the liquidation of the Council of People's Commissars of the Don Republic in the fall of 1918, the Central Committee of the RCP (b) appointed several members of the Don Bureau of the RCP (b) to lead illegal party work in the territory occupied by the enemy. The death of the Don Republic as a result of the intervention of German troops and the uprising of the Lower Don Cossacks in the spring of 1918, as well as the execution of the Podtelkov expedition, significantly influenced the attitude of the leaders of the Don Bolsheviks towards the Cossacks. As a result, the Circular of the Organizing Bureau of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) dated January 24, 1919, containing points about mass terror in relation to the counter-revolutionary Cossacks.

And when the November revolution broke out in Germany, the Cossacks became a real threat. “Tear the thorn out of the heart” - this was the unanimous decision. At the beginning of January 1919, units of the Southern Front of the Red Army launched a counteroffensive to put an end to the rebellious Cossack Don. Its organizers neglected the fact that by that time the Cossacks, especially the front-line soldiers, had already begun to lean towards Soviet power. Although political agencies called on soldiers and commanders to be tolerant and prevent violence, for many of them the principle of “blood for blood” and “an eye for an eye” became decisive. The villages and farms, which had been quiet, turned into a boiling cauldron.

In such an extremely aggravated and cruel situation, on January 24, 1919, the Organizing Bureau of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) adopted a Circular Letter, which spurred violence and served as a target for decossackization:

“Carry out mass terror against the rich Cossacks, exterminating them without exception; carry out merciless mass terror against all Cossacks who took any direct or indirect part in the fight against Soviet power. It is necessary to apply to the average Cossacks all those measures that provide a guarantee against any attempts on their part to make new protests against Soviet power.

• 1. Confiscate bread and force all surplus to be poured into specified points, this applies to both bread and all agricultural products.
• 2. Take all measures to assist the migrating newcomer poor, organizing resettlement where possible.
• 3. Equalize newcomers, non-residents with the Cossacks in land and in all other respects.
• 4. Carry out complete disarmament, shoot everyone who is found with a weapon after the surrender date.
• 5. Issue weapons only to reliable elements from out of town.
• 6. Armed detachments should be left in the Cossack villages until complete order is established.
• 7. All commissioners appointed to certain Cossack settlements are invited to show maximum firmness and steadily implement these instructions.”

Since January 1919, the practice of decossackization in the Bolshevik style began: everything came down to military-political methods. And this policy was not at all limited to some one-time act. She is the course, the line. Their theoretical beginning goes back to the end of the 19th century, and their implementation dates back to the entire period of the undivided rule of the RCP (b) - CPSU (b) - CPSU.

On March 16, 1919, the Central Committee of the RCP (b) suspended the circular letter, which met the requirements of the policy of alliance with the middle peasantry, which the party congress was to adopt. But at the same time, Lenin and other senior leaders agreed with the provision on organizing the eviction of the Cossacks and the resettlement of people from starving areas.

The Donburo greeted with bewilderment the decision to suspend the January decision and on April 8 adopted a resolution emphasizing that “the very existence of the Cossacks, with their way of life, privileges and remnants, and most importantly, the ability to conduct armed struggle, poses a threat to Soviet power. The Donburo proposed to eliminate the Cossacks as a special economic and ethnographic group by dispersing them and resettling them beyond the Don.”

1919 -1920 - the peak of the relationship between the Soviet government and the Cossacks. The Cossacks suffered huge losses. Some died on the battlefield, others - from Czech bullets, others - tens of thousands - thrown out of the country, lost their homeland. Decoration in the Bolshevik way changed its forms and methods, but it never stopped. It demanded the total destruction of the counter-revolutionary leaders of the Cossacks; the eviction outside the Don of its unstable part, which included all the middle peasants - the bulk of the villages and farmsteads; resettlement of poor peasants from the North-Western industrial center to the Don. The indiscriminate approach to the implementation of these inhumane orders resulted in rampant crimes, which meant genuine genocide.

A cruel and unjustified political line that gave rise to grave consequences, including the echo that has reached our days, causing justifiable anger, however, a biased interpretation. The circular letter, often mistakenly called a directive, was overgrown with tales and fables. But accuracy is an essential feature of truthful reporting of history. The implementation of the cruel circular on the ground resulted in repressions that fell not only on the real culprits, but also on defenseless old men and women. Many Cossacks became victims of lawlessness, although there is no exact information about their number. .

The Cossacks, whose amplitude of fluctuations in the direction of Soviet power had previously been quite large, now turned in their mass by 180 degrees. Total repressions served as an anti-Soviet catalyst. On the night of March 12, 1919, in the villages of the Kazan village, the Cossacks killed the small Red Guard garrisons and local communists. A few days later, the flames engulfed all the districts of the Upper Don, which went down in history as Veshensky. It blew up the rear of the Southern Front of the Red Army. The offensive of its units on Novocherkassk and Rostov floundered. The attempt to suppress the uprising was unsuccessful, since it practically boiled down to exclusively military efforts.

The Center's policy towards the Cossacks in 1919 was not consistent. On March 16, the Plenum of the Central Committee of the RCP(b) specifically discussed the issue of them. G.Ya. Sokolnikov condemned the Circular Letter and criticized the activities of the Donburo of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) (9, p. 14). However, the outlined course was not developed and implemented. The problems of resettlement of new settlers to the Don took center stage, which added fuel to the fire and created a field of increased political tension. F.K. Mironov sent his protests to Moscow. The RVS of the Southern Front, although reluctantly, somewhat softened its position regarding the Cossacks. V.I. Lenin was in a hurry to end the uprising. (9, p.14). However, the military command was in no hurry to do this. Trotsky created an expeditionary force, which went on the offensive only on May 28. But by June 5, White Guard troops broke through to Veshenskaya and joined forces with the rebels. Soon Denikin announced a campaign against Moscow. He assigned the decisive role to the Cossacks. The civil war is spreading and becoming fiercer. It dragged on for several more months. De-Cossackization turned out to be such a high price.

On August 13, 1919, a joint meeting of the Politburo and the Organizing Bureau of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) discussed the appeal to the Cossacks, presented by Lenin. The government stated that it “is not going to de-Cossack anyone by force... does not go against the Cossack way of life, leaving the working Cossacks their villages and farms, their lands, the right to wear whatever uniform they want (for example, stripes).” But the Cossacks’ patience ran out. And on August 24, Mironov’s corps voluntarily set out from Saransk to the front. On August 28, Grazhdanupr, the body of decossackization, was abolished and a temporary Don Executive Committee was created, headed by Medvedev. In Balashov, under the leadership of Trotsky, the meeting brought to the “foreground” and outlined “broad political work in the Cossacks.” After this, Trotsky developed “Theses on Work on the Don.”

At the moment when Denikin broke through to Tula, Trotsky left the question to the Party Central Committee about changing the policy towards the Don Cossacks and about Mironov: “We are giving the Don, Kuban complete “autonomy”, our troops are clearing the Don. The Cossacks are completely breaking with Denikin. Appropriate guarantees must be created. Mironov and his comrades could act as a mediator, who would have to go deep into the Don.” On October 23, the Politburo decided: “To release Mironov from any punishment,” and his appointment to the position should be agreed upon with Trotsky. On October 26, it was decided to publish Mironov’s appeal to the Don Cossacks. Trotsky proposed appointing him to a command post, but the Politburo, disagreeing with him, sent Mironov to work only in the Don Executive Committee for now.

The truth about de-Cossackization without its falsification and without the political game around it is one of the most difficult pages in the history of the Cossacks, although it had many of them. And not only in Soviet times, but also in ancient times.

The triumphal march of Soviet power in many regions of the country took place in a climate of civil war. This is so obvious that it leaves no doubt. Another thing is that there was a fundamental difference between the civil war of the end of 1917 and the middle of 1918. It was in both its forms and scale. In turn, this directly depended on the intensity and strength of the imperialist intervention in Soviet Russia.

The above provides full grounds for the following conclusion: the civil war in Russia in general and in its individual regions with a special composition of the population, where the forces of the all-Russian counter-revolution were relocated, began from the first days of the revolution. Moreover, this revolution itself unfolded in the context of a peasant war that flared up in September 1917 against the landowners. The overthrown classes resorted to violence against the rebellious people. And the latter had no choice but to respond to force with force. As a result, the revolution was accompanied by severe armed clashes.

At the same time, the severity of the civil war had a decisive influence on the choice of paths and forms of socio-economic transformations and the first steps of Soviet power. And for this reason, too, she often took unjustifiably cruel measures, which ultimately boomeranged against her, because this repelled the masses, especially the Cossacks, from her. Already in the spring of 1918, when the dispossessed peasantry began to equalize the redistribution of land, the Cossacks turned away from the revolution. In May they destroyed F. Podtelkov's expedition to the Don.

“Cossack uprising on the Don in March-June 1919. was one of the most serious threats to the Soviet government and had a great influence on the course of the civil war." The study of materials from the archives of Rostov-on-Don and Moscow made it possible to reveal contradictions in the policies of the Bolshevik Party at all levels.

The Plenum of the RCP(b) of March 16, 1919 canceled Sverdlov’s January directive, just on the day of his “untimely” death, but the Donburo did not take this into account and on April 8, 1919, promulgated another directive: “The urgent task is complete, rapid and the decisive destruction of the Cossacks as a special economic group, the destruction of its economic foundations, the physical destruction of the Cossack bureaucracy and officers, in general all the top of the Cossacks, the dispersal and neutralization of the ordinary Cossacks and their formal liquidation.”

The head of the Donburo Syrtsov telegraphed the pre-revolutionary committee of the village of Veshenskaya: “For every killed Red Army soldier and member of the revolutionary committee, shoot a hundred Cossacks.”

After the fall of the Don Soviet Republic in September 1918, the Don Bureau was created to direct underground communist work in Rostov, Taganrog and other places behind white lines. When the Red Army advanced to the South, the Donburo became the main factor in governing the Don region. Members of the bureau were appointed by Moscow and operated from Kursk, Millerovo - rear areas that remained under Soviet control. Local officials carried out large-scale confiscations of private property. The RVS of the Southern Front insisted on executions and shootings and called for the creation of tribunals in each regiment. Repression carried out by army tribunals and the Donburo forced the territory to rise up against the communists, and this led to the loss of the entire upper Don region.

The first signs of a departure from brutal military confrontation and extreme methods of resolving contradictions between the Cossacks and Soviet power appeared towards the end of 1919 and were consolidated in 1920, when the civil war in southern Russia brought victory to the Bolsheviks. The White movement, in which the Cossacks played a prominent role, was defeated. Bolshevism came into its own on the Don.

Assessing the activities of the Donburo of the RCP (b) from the autumn of 1918 to the autumn of 1919, it should be recognized that despite the well-known positive contribution of the Donburo to the defeat of the counter-revolution and the establishment of Soviet power on the Don, a number of major miscalculations and failures were made in its Cossack policy. “Subsequently, all members of the Donburo reconsidered their views and actions. S.I. Syrtsov recognized the work experience of the Citizenship Department as unsatisfactory and tried to limit the administrative activities of political departments on the Don in the spring of 1920. At the first regional party conference, he spoke out against S.F. Vasilchenko, who called for crushing the Cossacks with “fire and sword.” Five years later, based on Syrtsov’s report, at the April (1925) plenum of the Central Committee of the RCP (b), a resolution was adopted “On work among the Cossacks,” which outlined a course for the widespread involvement of the Cossacks in Soviet construction and the removal of all restrictions on their life activities.

Don Bolshevik Cossacks civil war

The reasons why the Cossacks of all Cossack regions for the most part rejected the destructive ideas of Bolshevism and entered into an open struggle against them, and in completely unequal conditions, are still not entirely clear and constitute a mystery for many historians. After all, in everyday life, the Cossacks were the same farmers as 75% of the Russian population, bore the same state burdens, if not more, and were under the same administrative control of the state. With the beginning of the revolution that came after the abdication of the sovereign, the Cossacks within the regions and in the front-line units experienced various psychological stages. During the February rebellion in Petrograd, the Cossacks took a neutral position and remained outside spectators of the unfolding events. The Cossacks saw that despite the presence of significant armed forces in Petrograd, the government not only did not use them, but also strictly prohibited their use against the rebels. During the previous rebellion in 1905-1906, the Cossack troops were the main armed force that restored order in the country, as a result in public opinion they earned the contemptuous title of “whips” and “royal satraps and guardsmen.” Therefore, in the rebellion that arose in the Russian capital, the Cossacks were inert and left the government to decide the issue of restoring order with the help of other troops. After the abdication of the sovereign and the entry into control of the country by the Provisional Government, the Cossacks considered the continuity of power legitimate and were ready to support the new government. But gradually this attitude changed, and, observing the complete inactivity of the authorities and even the encouragement of unbridled revolutionary excesses, the Cossacks began to gradually move away from the destructive power, and the instructions of the Council of Cossack Troops, operating in Petrograd under the chairmanship of the ataman of the Orenburg army Dutov, became authoritative for them.

Inside the Cossack regions, the Cossacks also did not become intoxicated with revolutionary freedoms and, having made some local changes, continued to live as before, without causing any economic, much less social, upheaval. At the front, in military units, the Cossacks accepted the order for the army, which completely changed the foundations of military formations, with bewilderment and, under the new conditions, continued to maintain order and discipline in the units, most often electing their former commanders and superiors. There were no refusals to execute orders and there was no settling of personal scores with the command staff. But the tension gradually increased. The population of the Cossack regions and Cossack units at the front were subjected to active revolutionary propaganda, which involuntarily had to affect their psychology and forced them to listen carefully to the calls and demands of the revolutionary leaders. In the area of ​​the Don Army, one of the important revolutionary acts was the removal of the appointed ataman Count Grabbe, his replacement with an elected ataman of Cossack origin, General Kaledin, and the restoration of the convening of public representatives to the Military Circle, according to the custom that had existed since ancient times, until the reign of Emperor Peter I. After which their lives continued walking without much shock. The issue of relations with the non-Cossack population, which, psychologically, followed the same revolutionary paths as the population of the rest of Russia, became acute. At the front, powerful propaganda was carried out among the Cossack military units, accusing Ataman Kaledin of being counter-revolutionary and having a certain success among the Cossacks. The seizure of power by the Bolsheviks in Petrograd was accompanied by a decree addressed to the Cossacks, in which only geographical names were changed, and it was promised that the Cossacks would be freed from the yoke of generals and the burden of military service and equality and democratic freedoms would be established in everything. The Cossacks had nothing against this.

Rice. 1 Region of the Don Army

The Bolsheviks came to power under anti-war slogans and soon began to fulfill their promises. In November 1917, the Council of People's Commissars invited all warring countries to begin peace negotiations, but the Entente countries refused. Then Ulyanov sent a delegation to German-occupied Brest-Litovsk for separate peace negotiations with delegates from Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey and Bulgaria. Germany's ultimatum demands shocked the delegates and caused hesitation even among the Bolsheviks, who were not particularly patriotic, but Ulyanov accepted these conditions. The “obscene Peace of Brest-Litovsk” was concluded, according to which Russia lost about 1 million km² of territory, pledged to demobilize the army and navy, transfer ships and infrastructure of the Black Sea Fleet to Germany, pay an indemnity of 6 billion marks, recognize the independence of Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Finland. The Germans had a free hand to continue the war in the west. At the beginning of March, the German army along the entire front began to advance to occupy the territories given up by the Bolsheviks under the peace treaty. Moreover, Germany, in addition to the agreement, announced to Ulyanov that Ukraine should be considered a province of Germany, to which Ulyanov also agreed. There is a fact in this case that is not widely known. Russia's diplomatic defeat in Brest-Litovsk was caused not only by the corruption, inconsistency and adventurism of the Petrograd negotiators. The “joker” played a key role here. A new partner suddenly appeared in the group of contracting parties - the Ukrainian Central Rada, which, despite all the precariousness of its position, behind the back of the delegation from Petrograd, on February 9 (January 27), 1918, signed a separate peace treaty with Germany in Brest-Litovsk. The next day, the Soviet delegation interrupted the negotiations with the slogan “we will stop the war, but we will not sign peace.” In response, on February 18, German troops launched an offensive along the entire front line. At the same time, the German-Austrian side tightened the peace terms. In view of the complete inability of the Sovietized old army and the beginnings of the Red Army to resist even the limited advance of German troops and the need for a respite to strengthen the Bolshevik regime, on March 3, Russia also signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. After that, the “independent” Ukraine was occupied by the Germans and, as unnecessary, they threw Petliura “from the throne”, placing the puppet Hetman Skoropadsky on him. Thus, shortly before falling into oblivion, the Second Reich, under the leadership of Kaiser Wilhelm II, captured Ukraine and Crimea.

After the Bolsheviks concluded the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, part of the territory of the Russian Empire turned into zones of occupation of the Central countries. Austro-German troops occupied Finland, the Baltic states, Belarus, Ukraine and eliminated the Soviets there. The Allies vigilantly monitored what was happening in Russia and also tried to ensure their interests connecting them with the former Russia. In addition, there were up to two million prisoners in Russia who could, with the consent of the Bolsheviks, be sent to their countries, and for the Entente powers it was important to prevent the return of prisoners of war to Germany and Austria-Hungary. Ports in the north of Murmansk and Arkhangelsk, and in the Far East Vladivostok served as a means of communication between Russia and its allies. Large warehouses of property and military equipment, delivered by foreigners on orders from the Russian government, were concentrated in these ports. The accumulated cargo amounted to over a million tons, worth up to 2 and a half billion rubles. Cargoes were shamelessly stolen, including by local revolutionary committees. To ensure the safety of cargo, these ports were gradually occupied by the Allies. Since orders imported from England, France and Italy were sent through northern ports, they were occupied by 12,000 British and 11,000 Allied units. Imports from the USA and Japan went through Vladivostok. On July 6, 1918, the Entente declared Vladivostok an international zone, and the city was occupied by Japanese units of 57,000 and other allied units of 13,000 people. But they did not begin to overthrow the Bolshevik government. Only on July 29, the Bolshevik power in Vladivostok was overthrown by the White Czechs under the leadership of the Russian general M. K. Diterichs.

In domestic politics, the Bolsheviks issued decrees that destroyed all social structures: banks, national industry, private property, land ownership, and under the guise of nationalization, simple robbery was often carried out without any state leadership. The inevitable devastation began in the country, for which the Bolsheviks blamed the bourgeoisie and “rotten intellectuals,” and these classes were subjected to the most severe terror, bordering on destruction. It is still completely impossible to understand how this all-destroying force came to power in Russia, given that power was seized in a country that had a thousand-year-old culture. After all, with the same measures, international destructive forces hoped to produce an internal explosion in worried France, transferring up to 10 million francs to French banks for this purpose. But France, by the beginning of the twentieth century, had already exhausted its limit on revolutions and was tired of them. Unfortunately for the businessmen of the revolution, there were forces in the country that were able to unravel the insidious and far-reaching plans of the leaders of the proletariat and resist them. This was written about in more detail in Military Review in the article “How America saved Western Europe from the specter of world revolution.”

One of the main reasons that allowed the Bolsheviks to carry out a coup d'etat and then quite quickly seize power in many regions and cities of the Russian Empire was the support of numerous reserve and training battalions stationed throughout Russia that did not want to go to the front. It was Lenin’s promise of an immediate end to the war with Germany that predetermined the transition of the Russian army, which had decayed during the “Kerenschina,” to the side of the Bolsheviks, which ensured their victory. In most regions of the country, the establishment of Bolshevik power took place quickly and peacefully: out of 84 provincial and other large cities, only fifteen saw Soviet power established as a result of armed struggle. Having adopted the “Decree on Peace” on the second day of their stay in power, the Bolsheviks ensured the “triumphant march of Soviet power” across Russia from October 1917 to February 1918.

The relations between the Cossacks and the Bolshevik rulers were determined by the decrees of the Union of Cossack Troops and the Soviet government. On November 22, 1917, the Union of Cossack Troops presented a resolution in which it notified the Soviet government that:
- The Cossacks do not seek anything for themselves and do not demand anything for themselves outside the boundaries of their regions. But, guided by the democratic principles of self-determination of nationalities, it will not tolerate on its territories any power other than the people’s, formed by the free agreement of local nationalities without any external or outside influence.
- Sending punitive detachments against the Cossack regions, in particular against the Don, will bring civil war to the outskirts, where energetic work is underway to establish public order. This will cause a disruption in transport, will be an obstacle to the delivery of goods, coal, oil and steel to the cities of Russia and will worsen the food supply, leading to disorder in the breadbasket of Russia.
- The Cossacks oppose any introduction of foreign troops into the Cossack regions without the consent of the military and regional Cossack governments.
In response to the peace declaration of the Union of Cossack Troops, the Bolsheviks issued a decree to open military operations against the south, which read:
- Relying on the Black Sea Fleet, arm and organize the Red Guard to occupy the Donetsk coal region.
- From the north, from the headquarters of the Commander-in-Chief, move combined detachments to the south to the starting points: Gomel, Bryansk, Kharkov, Voronezh.
- The most active units should move from the Zhmerinka area to the east to occupy Donbass.

This decree created the germ of the fratricidal civil war of Soviet power against the Cossack regions. To survive, the Bolsheviks urgently needed Caucasian oil, Donetsk coal and bread from the southern outskirts. The outbreak of massive famine pushed Soviet Russia towards the rich south. The Don and Kuban governments did not have well-organized and sufficient forces at their disposal to protect the regions. The units returning from the front did not want to fight, they tried to disperse to the villages, and the young Cossack front-line soldiers entered into an open fight with the old men. In many villages this struggle became fierce, reprisals on both sides were brutal. But there were many Cossacks who came from the front, they were well armed and vociferous, had combat experience, and in most villages victory remained with the front-line youth, heavily infected with Bolshevism. It soon became clear that even in the Cossack regions, strong units could be created only on the basis of volunteerism. To maintain order in the Don and Kuban, their governments used detachments consisting of volunteers: students, cadets, cadets and youth. Many Cossack officers volunteered to form such volunteer (the Cossacks call them partisan) units, but this matter was poorly organized at the headquarters. Permission to form such detachments was given to almost everyone who asked. Many adventurers appeared, even robbers, who simply robbed the population for profit. However, the main threat to the Cossack regions turned out to be regiments returning from the front, since many of those who returned were infected with Bolshevism. The formation of volunteer Red Cossack units also began immediately after the Bolsheviks came to power. At the end of November 1917, at a meeting of representatives of the Cossack units of the Petrograd Military District, it was decided to create revolutionary detachments from the Cossacks of the 5th Cossack division, 1st, 4th and 14th Don regiments and send them to the Don, Kuban and Terek to defeat the counter-revolution and establish Soviet authorities. In January 1918, a congress of front-line Cossacks gathered in the village of Kamenskaya with the participation of delegates from 46 Cossack regiments. The Congress recognized Soviet power and created the Don Military Revolutionary Committee, which declared war on the ataman of the Don Army, General A.M. Kaledin, who opposed the Bolsheviks. Among the command staff of the Don Cossacks, two staff officers, military foreman Golubov and Mironov, were supporters of Bolshevik ideas, and Golubov’s closest collaborator was the sub-sergeant Podtyolkov. In January 1918, the 32nd Don Cossack Regiment returned to the Don from the Romanian Front. Having elected military sergeant F.K. as his commander. Mironov, the regiment supported the establishment of Soviet power, and decided not to go home until the counter-revolution led by Ataman Kaledin was defeated. But the most tragic role on the Don was played by Golubov, who in February occupied Novocherkassk with two regiments of Cossacks he propagated, dispersed the meeting of the Military Circle, arrested General Nazarov, who took office after the death of General Kaledin, and shot him. After a short time, this “hero” of the revolution was shot by the Cossacks right at the rally, and Podtyolkov, who had large sums of money with him, was captured by the Cossacks and, according to their verdict, hanged. Mironov's fate was also tragic. He managed to attract with him a significant number of Cossacks, with whom he fought on the side of the Reds, but, not being satisfied with their orders, he decided to go over with the Cossacks to the side of the fighting Don. Mironov was arrested by the Reds, sent to Moscow, where he was shot. But that will come later. In the meantime, there was great turmoil on the Don. If the Cossack population still hesitated, and only in some villages did the prudent voice of the old people gain the upper hand, then the non-Cossack population entirely sided with the Bolsheviks. The nonresident population in the Cossack regions always envied the Cossacks, who owned a large amount of land. Taking the side of the Bolsheviks, nonresidents hoped to take part in the division of the officers' and landowners' Cossack lands.

Other armed forces in the south were detachments of the emerging Volunteer Army, located in Rostov. On November 2, 1917, General Alekseev arrived on the Don, got in touch with Ataman Kaledin and asked him for permission to form volunteer detachments on the Don. General Alekseev’s goal was to take advantage of the southeastern base of the armed forces to gather the remaining steadfast officers, cadets, and old soldiers and organize them into the army necessary to restore order in Russia. Despite the complete lack of funds, Alekseev eagerly got down to business. On Barochnaya Street, the premises of one of the infirmaries were turned into an officers' dormitory, which became the cradle of volunteerism. Soon the first donation was received, 400 rubles. This is all that Russian society allocated to its defenders in November. But people simply walked to the Don, without any idea of ​​what awaited them, groping, in the darkness, across the solid Bolshevik sea. They went to where the centuries-old traditions of the Cossack freemen and the names of the leaders whom popular rumor associated with the Don served as a bright beacon. They came exhausted, hungry, ragged, but not discouraged. On December 6 (19), disguised as a peasant, with a false passport, General Kornilov arrived by rail in the Don. He wanted to go further to the Volga, and from there to Siberia. He considered it more correct for General Alekseev to remain in the south of Russia, and he would be given the opportunity to work in Siberia. He argued that in this case they would not interfere with each other and he would be able to organize a big business in Siberia. He was eager for space. But representatives of the “National Center” who arrived in Novocherkassk from Moscow insisted that Kornilov remain in the south of Russia and work together with Kaledin and Alekseev. An agreement was concluded between them, according to which General Alekseev took charge of all financial and political issues, General Kornilov took over the organization and command of the Volunteer Army, General Kaledin continued the formation of the Don Army and the management of the affairs of the Don Army. Kornilov had little faith in the success of work in the south of Russia, where he would have to create a white cause in the territories of the Cossack troops and depend on the military atamans. He said this: “I know Siberia, I believe in Siberia, things can be done there on a broad scale. Here Alekseev alone can easily handle the matter.” Kornilov was eager to go to Siberia with all his soul and heart, he wanted to be released and was not particularly interested in the work of forming the Volunteer Army. Kornilov’s fears that he would have friction and misunderstandings with Alekseev were justified from the first days of their work together. The forced stay of Kornilov in the south of Russia was a big political mistake of the “National Center”. But they believed that if Kornilov left, then many volunteers would follow him and the business started in Novocherkassk could fall apart. The formation of the Good Army progressed slowly, with an average of 75-80 volunteers signing up per day. There were few soldiers; mostly officers, cadets, students, cadets and high school students signed up. there was not enough in the Don warehouses; it had to be taken away from soldiers traveling home, in military echelons passing through Rostov and Novocherkassk, or bought through buyers in the same echelons. Lack of funds made work extremely difficult. The formation of the Don units progressed even worse. Generals Alekseev and Kornilov understood that the Cossacks did not want to go to restore order in Russia, but they were confident that the Cossacks would defend their lands. However, the situation in the Cossack regions of the southeast turned out to be much more difficult. The regiments returning from the front were completely neutral in the events taking place, and even showed a tendency towards Bolshevism, declaring that the Bolsheviks had not done anything bad to them.

In addition, inside the Cossack regions there was a difficult struggle against the non-resident population, and in the Kuban and Terek also against the highlanders. The military atamans had the opportunity to use well-trained teams of young Cossacks who were preparing to be sent to the front, and organize the conscription of successive ages of youth. General Kaledin could have had support in this from the elderly and front-line soldiers, who said: “We have served our duty, now we must call on others.” The formation of Cossack youth from conscription age could have given up to 2-3 divisions, which in those days was enough to maintain order on the Don, but this was not done. At the end of December, representatives of the British and French military missions arrived in Novocherkassk. They asked what had been done, what was planned to be done, after which they stated that they could help, but for now only with money, in the amount of 100 million rubles, in tranches of 10 million per month. The first payment was expected in January, but was never received, and then the situation completely changed. The initial funds for the formation of the Good Army consisted of donations, but they were scanty, mainly due to the unimaginable greed and stinginess of the Russian bourgeoisie and other propertied classes under the given circumstances. It should be said that the stinginess and stinginess of the Russian bourgeoisie is simply legendary. Back in 1909, during a discussion in the State Duma on the issue of the kulaks, P.A. Stolypin spoke prophetic words. He said: “... there is no more greedy and unscrupulous kulak and bourgeois than in Russia. It is no coincidence that in the Russian language the phrases “world-eater kulak and world-eater bourgeois” are used. If they do not change the type of their social behavior, great shocks await us...” He looked as if into water. They did not change social behavior. Almost all the organizers of the white movement point to the low usefulness of their appeals for material assistance to the property classes. However, by mid-January, a small (about 5 thousand people) but very combative and morally strong Volunteer Army had emerged. The Council of People's Commissars demanded the extradition or dispersal of volunteers. Kaledin and Krug answered: “There is no extradition from the Don!” The Bolsheviks, in order to eliminate the counter-revolutionaries, began to pull units loyal to them from the Western and Caucasian fronts to the Don region. They began to threaten the Don from Donbass, Voronezh, Torgovaya and Tikhoretskaya. In addition, the Bolsheviks tightened control on the railways and the influx of volunteers decreased sharply. At the end of January, the Bolsheviks occupied Bataysk and Taganrog, and on January 29, cavalry units moved from Donbass to Novocherkassk. The Don found himself defenseless against the Reds. Ataman Kaledin was confused, did not want bloodshed and decided to transfer his powers to the City Duma and democratic organizations, and then committed life with a shot in the heart. This was a sad but logical result of his activities. The First Don Circle gave pernach to the elected chieftain, but did not give him power.

The region was headed by a Military Government of 14 elders elected from each district. Their meetings had the character of a provincial duma and did not leave any trace in the history of the Don. On November 20, the government addressed the population with a very liberal declaration, convening a congress of the Cossack and peasant population on December 29 to organize the life of the Don region. At the beginning of January, a coalition government was created on a parity basis, 7 seats were given to the Cossacks, 7 to non-residents. The inclusion of demagogues-intellectuals and revolutionary democrats into the government finally led to the paralysis of power. Ataman Kaledin was ruined by his trust in the Don peasants and non-residents, his famous “parity”. He failed to glue the disparate pieces of the population of the Don region together. Under him, the Don split into two camps, Cossacks and Don peasants, along with non-resident workers and artisans. The latter, with few exceptions, were with the Bolsheviks. The Don peasantry, which made up 48% of the region's population, carried away by the broad promises of the Bolsheviks, was not satisfied with the measures of the Don government: the introduction of zemstvos in peasant districts, the attraction of peasants to participate in stanitsa self-government, their widespread admission into the Cossack class and the allocation of three million dessiatines of landowners' land. Under the influence of the incoming socialist element, the Don peasantry demanded a general division of all Cossack land. The numerically smallest working environment (10-11%) was concentrated in the most important centers, was the most restless and did not hide its sympathy for Soviet power. The revolutionary-democratic intelligentsia had not outlived its former psychology and, with amazing blindness, continued its destructive policy, which led to the death of democracy on a nationwide scale. The bloc of Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries reigned in all peasant and non-resident congresses, all kinds of dumas, councils, trade unions and inter-party meetings. There was not a single meeting where resolutions of no confidence in the ataman, the government and the Circle were not passed, or protests against their taking measures against anarchy, criminality and banditry.

They preached neutrality and reconciliation with that force that openly declared: “He who is not with us is against us.” In cities, workers' settlements and peasant settlements, the uprisings against the Cossacks did not subside. Attempts to place units of workers and peasants into Cossack regiments ended in disaster. They betrayed the Cossacks, went to the Bolsheviks and took Cossack officers with them to torture and death. The war took on the character of a class struggle. The Cossacks defended their Cossack rights from the Don workers and peasants. With the death of Ataman Kaledin and the occupation of Novocherkassk by the Bolsheviks, the period of the Great War and the transition to civil war ends in the south.

Rice. 2 Ataman Kaledin

On February 12, Bolshevik troops occupied Novocherkassk and military foreman Golubov, in “gratitude” for the fact that General Nazarov once saved him from prison, shot the new chieftain. Having lost all hope of holding Rostov, on the night of February 9 (22), the Good Army of 2,500 soldiers left the city for Aksai, and then moved to Kuban. After the establishment of Bolshevik power in Novocherkassk, terror began. Cossack units were prudently scattered throughout the city in small groups; domination in the city was in the hands of nonresidents and Bolsheviks. On suspicion of connections with the Good Army, officers were mercilessly executed. The robberies and robberies of the Bolsheviks made the Cossacks wary, even the Cossacks of the Golubovo regiments took a wait-and-see attitude. In the villages where nonresident and Don peasants seized power, the executive committees began dividing the Cossack lands. These outrages soon caused uprisings of the Cossacks in the villages adjacent to Novocherkassk. The leader of the Reds on the Don, Podtyolkov, and the head of the punitive detachment, Antonov, fled to Rostov, then were caught and executed. The occupation of Novocherkassk by the White Cossacks in April coincided with the occupation of Rostov by the Germans, and the return of the Volunteer Army to the Don region. But out of 252 villages of the Donskoy army, only 10 were liberated from the Bolsheviks. The Germans firmly occupied Rostov and Taganrog and the entire western part of the Donetsk district. The outposts of the Bavarian cavalry stood 12 versts from Novocherkassk. Under these conditions, Don was faced with four main tasks:
- immediately convene a new Circle, in which only delegates from the liberated villages could take part
- establish relations with the German authorities, find out their intentions and come to an agreement with them
- recreate the Don Army
- establish relationships with the Volunteer Army.

On April 28, a general meeting of the Don government and delegates from the villages and military units that took part in the expulsion of Soviet troops from the Don region took place. The composition of this Circle could not have any claim to resolving issues for the entire Army, which is why it limited its work to issues of organizing the struggle for the liberation of the Don. The meeting decided to declare itself the Don Rescue Circle. There were 130 people in it. Even on the democratic Don, this was the most popular assembly. The circle was called gray because there were no intelligentsia on it. At this time, the cowardly intelligentsia sat in cellars and basements, trembling for their lives or being mean to the commissars, signing up for service in the Soviets or trying to get a job in innocent institutions for education, food and finance. She had no time for elections in these troubled times, when both voters and deputies were risking their heads. The circle was elected without party struggle, there was no time for that. The circle was chosen and elected to it exclusively by Cossacks who passionately wanted to save their native Don and were ready to give their lives for this. And these were not empty words, because after the elections, having sent their delegates, the electors themselves dismantled their weapons and went to save the Don. This Circle did not have a political face and had one goal - to save the Don from the Bolsheviks, at any cost and at any cost. He was truly popular, meek, wise and businesslike. And this gray, from overcoat and coat cloth, that is, truly democratic, the Don saved the people's mind. Already by the time the full military circle was convened on August 15, 1918, the Don land was cleared of the Bolsheviks.

The second urgent task for the Don was to resolve relations with the Germans who occupied Ukraine and the western part of the lands of the Don Army. Ukraine also laid claim to the German-occupied Don lands: Donbass, Taganrog and Rostov. The attitude towards the Germans and towards Ukraine was the most pressing issue, and on April 29 the Circle decided to send a plenipotentiary embassy to the Germans in Kyiv in order to find out the reasons for their appearance on the territory of the Don. The negotiations took place in calm conditions. The Germans stated that they were not going to occupy the region and promised to clear the occupied villages, which they soon did. On the same day, the Circle decided to organize a real army, not from partisans, volunteers or vigilantes, but obeying laws and discipline. What Ataman Kaledin with his government and the Circle, consisting of talkative intellectuals, had been stomping around for almost a year, the gray Circle for saving the Don decided at two meetings. The Don Army was still only a project, and the command of the Volunteer Army already wanted to crush it under itself. But Krug answered clearly and specifically: “The supreme command of all military forces, without exception, operating on the territory of the Don Army must belong to the military ataman...”. This answer did not satisfy Denikin; he wanted to have large reinforcements of people and material in the person of the Don Cossacks, and not to have a “allied” army nearby. The circle worked intensively, meetings were held in the morning and evening. He was in a hurry to restore order and was not afraid of reproaches for his desire to return to the old regime. On May 1, the Circle decided: “Unlike the Bolshevik gangs, which do not wear any external insignia, all units participating in the defense of the Don must immediately take on their military appearance and wear shoulder straps and other insignia.” On May 3, as a result of a closed vote, Major General P.N. was elected military chieftain by 107 votes (13 against, 10 abstained). Krasnov. General Krasnov did not accept this election before the Circle adopted the laws that he considered necessary to introduce into the Donskoy army in order to be able to fulfill the tasks assigned to him by the Circle. Krasnov said at the Circle: “Creativity has never been the lot of the team. Raphael's Madonna was created by Raphael, and not by a committee of artists... You are the owners of the Don land, I am your manager. It's all about trust. If you trust me, you accept the laws I propose; if you do not accept them, it means that you do not trust me, you are afraid that I will use the power given to you to the detriment of the army. Then we have nothing to talk about. I cannot lead the army without your complete trust.” When asked by one of the members of the Circle whether he could suggest changing or altering anything in the laws proposed by the ataman, Krasnov replied: “You can. Articles 48,49,50. You can propose any flag except red, any coat of arms except the Jewish five-pointed star, any anthem except the international..." The very next day the Circle reviewed all the laws proposed by the ataman and adopted them. The circle restored the ancient pre-Petrine title “The Great Don Army”. The laws were an almost complete copy of the basic laws of the Russian Empire, with the difference that the rights and prerogatives of the emperor passed to... the ataman. And there was no time for sentimentality.

Before the eyes of the Don Rescue Circle stood the bloody ghosts of Ataman Kaledin, who had shot himself, and Ataman Nazarov, who had been shot. The Don lay in rubble, it was not only destroyed, but polluted by the Bolsheviks, and the German horses drank the water of the Quiet Don, a river sacred to the Cossacks. The work of the previous Circles led to this, with the decisions of which Kaledin and Nazarov fought, but could not win because they had no power. But these laws created many enemies for the chieftain. As soon as the Bolsheviks were expelled, the intelligentsia, hiding in cellars and basements, came out and started a liberal howl. These laws did not satisfy Denikin either, who saw in them a desire for independence. On May 5, the Circle dispersed, and the ataman was left alone to rule the army. That same evening, his adjutant Yesaul Kulgavov went to Kyiv with handwritten letters to Hetman Skoropadsky and Emperor Wilhelm. The result of the letter was that on May 8, a German delegation came to the ataman, with a statement that the Germans did not pursue any aggressive goals in relation to the Don and would leave Rostov and Taganrog as soon as they saw that complete order had been restored in the Don region. On May 9, Krasnov met with the Kuban ataman Filimonov and the Georgian delegation, and on May 15 in the village of Manychskaya with Alekseev and Denikin. The meeting revealed deep differences between the Don Ataman and the command of the Don Army in both tactics and strategy in the fight against the Bolsheviks. The goal of the rebel Cossacks was to liberate the land of the Don Army from the Bolsheviks. They had no further intentions of waging war outside their territory.

Rice. 3 Ataman Krasnov P.N.

By the time of the occupation of Novocherkassk and the election of the ataman by the Circle for the Salvation of the Don, all armed forces consisted of six infantry and two cavalry regiments of varying numbers. The junior officers were from the villages and were good, but there was a shortage of hundred and regimental commanders. Having experienced many insults and humiliations during the revolution, many senior commanders at first had distrust of the Cossack movement. The Cossacks were dressed in their semi-military dress, but boots were missing. Up to 30% were dressed in poles and bast shoes. Most wore shoulder straps, and everyone wore white stripes on their caps and hats to distinguish them from the Red Guard. The discipline was fraternal, the officers ate from the same pot with the Cossacks, because they were most often relatives. The headquarters were small; for economic purposes, the regiments had several public figures from the villages who resolved all logistical issues. The battle was fleeting. No trenches or fortifications were built. There were few entrenching tools, and natural laziness prevented the Cossacks from digging in. The tactics were simple. At dawn they began to attack in liquid chains. At this time, an outflanking column was moving along an intricate route towards the enemy’s flank and rear. If the enemy was ten times stronger, it was considered normal for an offensive. As soon as a bypass column appeared, the Reds began to retreat and then the Cossack cavalry rushed at them with a wild, soul-chilling whoop, knocked them over and took them prisoner. Sometimes the battle began with a feigned retreat of twenty versts (this is an old Cossack venter). The Reds rushed to pursue, and at this time the encircling columns closed behind them and the enemy found themselves in a fire pocket. With such tactics, Colonel Guselshchikov with regiments of 2-3 thousand people smashed and captured entire Red Guard divisions of 10-15 thousand people with convoys and artillery. Cossack custom required that officers go in front, so their losses were very high. For example, the division commander, General Mamantov, was wounded three times and still in chains. In the attack, the Cossacks were merciless, and they were also merciless towards the captured Red Guards. They were especially harsh towards captured Cossacks, who were considered traitors to the Don. Here the father used to sentence his son to death and did not want to say goodbye to him. It also happened the other way around. At this time, echelons of Red troops were still moving across the Don territory, fleeing to the east. But in June the railway line was cleared of the Reds, and in July, after the Bolsheviks were expelled from the Khopyorsky district, the entire territory of the Don was liberated from the Reds by the Cossacks themselves.

In other Cossack regions the situation was no easier than on the Don. The situation was especially difficult among the Caucasian tribes, where the Russian population was scattered. The North Caucasus was raging. The fall of the central government caused a shock more serious here than anywhere else. Reconciled by the tsarist power, but not having outlived the centuries-old strife and not having forgotten old grievances, the mixed-tribal population became agitated. The Russian element that united it, about 40% of the population consisted of two equal groups, Terek Cossacks and non-residents. But these groups were separated by social conditions, were settling their land scores and could not counter the Bolshevik threat with unity and strength. While Ataman Karaulov was alive, several Terek regiments and some ghost of power survived. On December 13, at the Prokhladnaya station, a crowd of Bolshevik soldiers, on the orders of the Vladikavkaz Soviet of Deputies, unhooked the ataman’s carriage, drove it to a distant dead end and opened fire on the carriage. Karaulov was killed. In fact, on the Terek, power passed to local councils and bands of soldiers of the Caucasian Front, who flowed in a continuous stream from the Transcaucasus and, not being able to penetrate further into their native places, due to the complete blockage of the Caucasian highways, settled like locusts across the Terek-Dagestan region. They terrorized the population, planted new councils or hired themselves into the service of existing ones, bringing fear, blood and destruction everywhere. This flow served as the most powerful conductor of Bolshevism, which swept the nonresident Russian population (due to the thirst for land), touched the Cossack intelligentsia (due to the thirst for power) and greatly confused the Terek Cossacks (due to the fear of “going against the people”). As for the mountaineers, they were extremely conservative in their way of life, which very little reflected social and land inequality. True to their customs and traditions, they were governed by their national councils and were alien to the ideas of Bolshevism. But the mountaineers quickly and willingly accepted the practical aspects of central anarchy and intensified violence and robbery. By disarming the passing troop trains, they had a lot of weapons and ammunition. On the basis of the Caucasian Native Corps, they formed national military formations.

After the death of Ataman Karaulov, an overwhelming struggle with the Bolshevik detachments that filled the region and the aggravation of controversial issues with neighbors - Kabardians, Chechens, Ossetians, Ingush - the Terek Army was turned into a republic, part of the RSFSR. Quantitatively, Terek Cossacks in the Terek region made up 20% of the population, nonresidents - 20%, Ossetians - 17%, Chechens - 16%, Kabardians - 12% and Ingush - 4%. The most active among other peoples were the smallest - the Ingush, who fielded a strong and well-armed detachment. They robbed everyone and kept Vladikavkaz in constant fear, which they captured and plundered in January. When Soviet power was established in Dagestan, as well as on the Terek, on March 9, 1918, the Council of People's Commissars set its first goal to break the Terek Cossacks, destroying their special advantages. Armed expeditions of mountaineers were sent to the villages, robberies, violence and murders were carried out, lands were taken away and handed over to the Ingush and Chechens. In this difficult situation, the Terek Cossacks lost heart. While the mountain peoples created their armed forces through improvisation, the natural Cossack army, which had 12 well-organized regiments, disintegrated, dispersed and disarmed at the request of the Bolsheviks. However, the excesses of the Reds led to the fact that on June 18, 1918, the uprising of the Terek Cossacks began under the leadership of Bicherakhov. The Cossacks defeat the Red troops and blockade their remnants in Grozny and Kizlyar. On July 20, in Mozdok, the Cossacks were convened for a congress, at which they decided on an armed uprising against Soviet power. The Terets established contact with the command of the Volunteer Army, the Terek Cossacks created a combat detachment of up to 12,000 people with 40 guns and resolutely took the path of fighting the Bolsheviks.

The Orenburg Army under the command of Ataman Dutov, the first to declare independence from the power of the Soviets, was the first to be invaded by detachments of workers and red soldiers, who began robbery and repression. Veteran of the fight against the Soviets, Orenburg Cossack General I.G. Akulinin recalled: “The stupid and cruel policy of the Bolsheviks, their undisguised hatred of the Cossacks, the desecration of Cossack shrines and, especially, bloody massacres, requisitions, indemnities and robbery in the villages - all this opened their eyes to the essence of Soviet power and forced them to take up arms. . The Bolsheviks could not lure the Cossacks with anything. The Cossacks had land, and they regained their freedom in the form of the broadest self-government in the first days of the February Revolution.” A turning point gradually occurred in the mood of the ordinary and front-line Cossacks; they increasingly began to speak out against the violence and tyranny of the new government. If in January 1918, Ataman Dutov, under pressure from Soviet troops, left Orenburg, and he had barely three hundred active fighters left, then on the night of April 4, sleeping Orenburg was raided by more than 1,000 Cossacks, and on July 3, power was restored in Orenburg passed into the hands of the ataman.

Fig.5 Ataman Dutov

In the area of ​​the Ural Cossacks, the resistance was more successful, despite the small number of the Troops. Uralsk was not occupied by the Bolsheviks. From the beginning of the birth of Bolshevism, the Ural Cossacks did not accept its ideology and back in March they easily dispersed the local Bolshevik revolutionary committees. The main reasons were that among the Urals there were no non-residents, there was a lot of land, and the Cossacks were Old Believers who more strictly guarded their religious and moral principles. The Cossack regions of Asian Russia generally occupied a special position. All of them were small in composition, most of them were historically formed in special conditions by state measures, for the purposes of state necessity, and their historical existence was determined by insignificant periods. Despite the fact that these troops did not have firmly established Cossack traditions, foundations and skills for forms of statehood, they all turned out to be hostile to the approaching Bolshevism. In mid-April 1918, the troops of Ataman Semyonov, about 1000 bayonets and sabers, went on the offensive from Manchuria to Transbaikalia, against 5.5 thousand for the Reds. At the same time, the uprising of the Transbaikal Cossacks began. By May, Semenov’s troops approached Chita, but were unable to take it immediately. The battles between Semyonov’s Cossacks and the red detachments, consisting mainly of former political prisoners and captured Hungarians, in Transbaikalia took place with varying degrees of success. However, at the end of July, the Cossacks defeated the Red troops and took Chita on August 28. Soon the Amur Cossacks drove the Bolsheviks out of their capital Blagoveshchensk, and the Ussuri Cossacks took Khabarovsk. Thus, under the command of their atamans: Transbaikal - Semenov, Ussuri - Kalmykov, Semirechensky - Annenkov, Ural - Tolstov, Siberian - Ivanov, Orenburg - Dutov, Astrakhan - Prince Tundutov, they entered into a decisive battle. In the fight against the Bolsheviks, the Cossack regions fought exclusively for their lands and law and order, and their actions, according to historians, were in the nature of a guerrilla war.

A huge role along the entire length of the Siberian railway was played by the troops of the Czechoslovak legions, formed by the Russian government from Czech and Slovak prisoners of war, numbering up to 45,000 people. By the beginning of the revolution, the Czech corps stood in the rear of the Southwestern Front in Ukraine. In the eyes of the Austro-Germans, legionnaires, like former prisoners of war, were traitors. When the Germans attacked Ukraine in March 1918, the Czechs offered strong resistance to them, but most Czechs did not see their place in Soviet Russia and wanted to return to the European front. According to the agreement with the Bolsheviks, Czech trains were sent towards Siberia to board ships in Vladivostok and send them to Europe. In addition to the Czechoslovaks, there were many captured Hungarians in Russia, who mostly sympathized with the Reds. The Czechoslovakians had a centuries-old and fierce hostility and enmity with the Hungarians (how can one not recall the immortal works of J. Hasek in this regard). Due to fear of attacks on the way by the Hungarian Red units, the Czechs resolutely refused to obey the Bolshevik order to surrender all weapons, which is why it was decided to disperse the Czech legions. They were divided into four groups with a distance between groups of echelons of 1000 kilometers, so that the echelons with Czechs stretched throughout Siberia from the Volga to Transbaikalia. The Czech legions played a colossal role in the Russian civil war, since after their rebellion the fight against the Soviets sharply intensified.

Despite the agreements, there were considerable misunderstandings in the relations between the Czechs, Hungarians and local revolutionary committees. As a result, on May 25, 1918, 4.5 thousand Czechs rebelled in Mariinsk, and on May 26, the Hungarians provoked an uprising of 8.8 thousand Czechs in Chelyabinsk. Then, with the support of Czechoslovak troops, the Bolshevik government was overthrown on May 26 in Novonikolaevsk, May 29 in Penza, May 30 in Syzran, May 31 in Tomsk and Kurgan, June 7 in Omsk, June 8 in Samara and June 18 in Krasnoyarsk. The formation of Russian combat units began in the liberated areas. On July 5, Russian and Czechoslovak troops occupy Ufa, and on July 25 they take Yekaterinburg. At the end of 1918, the Czechoslovak legionnaires themselves began a gradual retreat to the Far East. But, having participated in battles in Kolchak’s army, they would finally finish their retreat and leave Vladivostok for France only at the beginning of 1920. In such conditions, the Russian White movement began in the Volga region and Siberia, not counting the independent actions of the Ural and Orenburg Cossack troops, which began the fight against the Bolsheviks immediately after they came to power. On June 8, the Committee of the Constituent Assembly (Komuch) was created in Samara, liberated from the Reds. He declared himself a temporary revolutionary government, which was supposed to spread over the entire territory of Russia and transfer control of the country to a legally elected Constituent Assembly. The rising population of the Volga region began a successful struggle against the Bolsheviks, but in the liberated places control ended up in the hands of the fleeing fragments of the Provisional Government. These heirs and participants in destructive activities, having formed a government, carried out the same destructive work. At the same time, Komuch created his own armed forces - the People's Army. On June 9, Lieutenant Colonel Kappel began commanding a detachment of 350 people in Samara. In mid-June, the replenished detachment took Syzran, Stavropol Volzhsky (now Togliatti), and also inflicted a heavy defeat on the Reds near Melekes. On July 21, Kappel takes Simbirsk, defeating the superior forces of the Soviet commander Guy defending the city. As a result, by the beginning of August 1918, the territory of the Constituent Assembly extended from west to east for 750 versts from Syzran to Zlatoust, from north to south for 500 versts from Simbirsk to Volsk. On August 7, Kappel’s troops, having previously defeated the red river flotilla that came out to meet them at the mouth of the Kama, take Kazan. There they seize part of the gold reserves of the Russian Empire (650 million gold rubles in coins, 100 million rubles in credit notes, gold bars, platinum and other valuables), as well as huge warehouses with weapons, ammunition, medicines, and ammunition. This gave the Samara government a solid financial and material base. With the capture of Kazan, the Academy of the General Staff, located in the city, headed by General A.I. Andogsky, moved into the anti-Bolshevik camp in its entirety.

A government of industrialists was formed in Yekaterinburg, a Siberian government was formed in Omsk, and the government of Ataman Semyonov, who led the Transbaikal Army, was formed in Chita. The Allies dominated in Vladivostok. Then General Horvath arrived from Harbin, and as many as three authorities were formed: from the proteges of the Allies, General Horvath and from the railway board. Such fragmentation of the anti-Bolshevik front in the east required unification, and a meeting was convened in Ufa to select a single authoritative state power. The situation in the units of the anti-Bolshevik forces was unfavorable. The Czechs did not want to fight in Russia and demanded that they be sent to the European fronts against the Germans. There was no trust in the Siberian government and members of the Komuch among the troops and the people. In addition, the representative of England, General Knox, stated that until a firm government was created, the delivery of supplies from the British would be stopped. Under these conditions, Admiral Kolchak joined the government and in the fall he carried out a coup and was proclaimed head of government and supreme commander with the transfer of full power to him.

In the south of Russia events developed as follows. After the Reds occupied Novocherkassk in early 1918, the Volunteer Army retreated to Kuban. During the campaign to Ekaterinodar, the army, having endured all the difficulties of the winter campaign, later nicknamed the “ice campaign,” fought continuously. After the death of General Kornilov, who was killed near Yekaterinodar on March 31 (April 13), the army again made its way with a large number of prisoners to the territory of the Don, where by that time the Cossacks, who had rebelled against the Bolsheviks, had begun to clear their territory. Only by May the army found itself in conditions that allowed it to rest and replenish itself for the further fight against the Bolsheviks. Although the attitude of the Volunteer Army command towards the German army was irreconcilable, it, having no weapons, tearfully begged Ataman Krasnov to send the Volunteer Army weapons, shells and cartridges that it received from the German army. Ataman Krasnov, in his colorful expression, receiving military equipment from the hostile Germans, washed them in the clean waters of the Don and transferred part of the Volunteer Army. Kuban was still occupied by the Bolsheviks. In Kuban, the break with the center, which occurred on the Don due to the collapse of the Provisional Government, occurred earlier and more acutely. Back on October 5, with a strong protest from the Provisional Government, the regional Cossack Rada adopted a resolution on separating the region into an independent Kuban Republic. At the same time, the right to elect members of the self-government body was granted only to the Cossack, mountain population and old-time peasants, that is, almost half of the region’s population was deprived of voting rights. A military ataman, Colonel Filimonov, was placed at the head of the socialist government. The discord between the Cossack and nonresident populations took on increasingly acute forms. Not only the nonresident population, but also the front-line Cossacks stood up against the Rada and the government. Bolshevism came to this mass. The Kuban units returning from the front did not go to war against the government, did not want to fight the Bolsheviks and did not follow the orders of their elected authorities. An attempt, following the example of Don, to create a government based on “parity” ended in the same way, paralysis of power. Everywhere, in every village and village, the Red Guard from outside the city gathered, and they were joined by a part of the Cossack front-line soldiers, who were poorly subordinate to the center, but followed exactly its policy. These undisciplined, but well-armed and violent gangs began to impose Soviet power, redistribute land, confiscate grain surpluses and socialize, and simply rob wealthy Cossacks and behead the Cossacks - persecute officers, non-Bolshevik intelligentsia, priests, and authoritative old men. And above all, to disarmament. It is worthy of surprise with what complete non-resistance the Cossack villages, regiments and batteries gave up their rifles, machine guns, and guns. When the villages of the Yeisk department rebelled at the end of April, it was a completely unarmed militia. The Cossacks had no more than 10 rifles per hundred; the rest were armed with what they could. Some attached daggers or scythes to long sticks, others took pitchforks, others took spears, and others simply shovels and axes. Punitive detachments with... Cossack weapons came out against defenseless villages. By the beginning of April, all non-resident villages and 85 out of 87 villages were Bolshevik. But the Bolshevism of the villages was purely external. Often only the names changed: the ataman became a commissar, the village assembly became a council, the village board became an iskom.

Where executive committees were captured by non-residents, their decisions were sabotaged, re-elected every week. There was a stubborn, but passive, without inspiration or enthusiasm, struggle between the age-old way of Cossack democracy and life with the new government. There was a desire to preserve Cossack democracy, but there was no courage. All this, in addition, was heavily implicated in the pro-Ukrainian separatism of some Cossacks who had Dnieper roots. The pro-Ukrainian figure Luka Bych, who headed the Rada, declared: “Helping the Volunteer Army means preparing for the reabsorption of Kuban by Russia.” Under these conditions, Ataman Shkuro gathered the first partisan detachment, located in the Stavropol region, where the Council was meeting, intensified the struggle and presented the Council with an ultimatum. The uprising of the Kuban Cossacks quickly gained strength. In June, the 8,000-strong Volunteer Army began its second campaign against Kuban, which had completely rebelled against the Bolsheviks. This time White was lucky. General Denikin successively defeated Kalnin’s 30,000-strong army near Belaya Glina and Tikhoretskaya, then in a fierce battle near Yekaterinodar, Sorokin’s 30,000-strong army. On July 21, the Whites occupied Stavropol, and on August 17, Ekaterinodar. Blocked on the Taman Peninsula, a 30,000-strong group of Reds under the command of Kovtyukh, the so-called “Taman Army,” along the Black Sea coast fought its way across the Kuban River, where the remnants of the defeated armies of Kalnin and Sorokin fled. By the end of August, the territory of the Kuban army is completely cleared of the Bolsheviks, and the strength of the White Army reaches 40 thousand bayonets and sabers. However, having entered the territory of Kuban, Denikin issued a decree addressed to the Kuban ataman and the government, demanding:
- full tension on the part of Kuban for its speedy liberation from the Bolsheviks
- all priority units of the Kuban military forces should henceforth be part of the Volunteer Army to carry out national tasks
- in the future, no separatism should be shown on the part of the liberated Kuban Cossacks.

Such gross interference by the command of the Volunteer Army in the internal affairs of the Kuban Cossacks had a negative impact. General Denikin led an army that had no defined territory, no people under his control, and, even worse, no political ideology. The commander of the Don Army, General Denisov, even called the volunteers “wandering musicians” in his hearts. General Denikin's ideas were oriented towards armed struggle. Not having sufficient means for this, General Denikin demanded the subordination of the Cossack regions of the Don and Kuban to him in order to fight. Don was in better conditions and was not at all bound by Denikin's instructions. The German army was perceived on the Don as a real force that contributed to getting rid of Bolshevik domination and terror. The Don government entered into contact with the German command and established fruitful cooperation. Relations with the Germans resulted in a purely business form. The rate of the German mark was set at 75 kopecks of the Don currency, a price was made for a Russian rifle with 30 rounds of one pound of wheat or rye, and other supply agreements were concluded. From the German army through Kiev in the first month and a half the Don Army received: 11,651 rifles, 88 machine guns, 46 guns, 109 thousand artillery shells, 11.5 million rifle cartridges, of which 35 thousand artillery shells and about 3 million rifle cartridges. At the same time, all the shame of peaceful relations with an irreconcilable enemy fell solely on Ataman Krasnov. As for the Supreme Command, according to the laws of the Don Army, it could only belong to the Military Ataman, and before his election - to the marching Ataman. This discrepancy led to the Don demanding the return of all the Don people from the Dorovol army. The relationship between the Don and the Good Army became not an alliance, but a relationship of fellow travelers.

In addition to tactics, there were also great differences within the white movement in strategy, policy and war goals. The goal of the Cossack masses was to liberate their land from the Bolshevik invasion, establish order in their region and provide the Russian people with the opportunity to arrange their destiny according to their own wishes. Meanwhile, the forms of civil war and the organization of the armed forces returned the art of war to the era of the 19th century. The successes of the troops then depended solely on the qualities of the commander who directly controlled the troops. Good commanders of the 19th century did not scatter the main forces, but directed them towards one main goal: the capture of the enemy’s political center. With the capture of the center, the government of the country is paralyzed and the conduct of the war becomes more complicated. The Council of People's Commissars, sitting in Moscow, was in extremely difficult conditions, reminiscent of the situation in Muscovite Rus' in the 14th-15th centuries, limited by the Oka and Volga rivers. Moscow was cut off from all types of supplies, and the goals of the Soviet rulers were reduced to obtaining basic food supplies and a piece of daily bread. In the pathetic calls of the leaders there were no longer any high motives emanating from the ideas of Marx; they sounded cynical, figurative and simple, as they once sounded in the speeches of the people's leader Pugachev: “Go, take everything and destroy everyone who stands in your way.” . People's Commissar of Military and Marine Bronstein (Trotsky), in his speech on June 9, 1918, indicated simple and clear goals: “Comrades! Among all the questions that trouble our hearts, there is one simple question - the question of our daily bread. All our thoughts, all our ideals are now dominated by one concern, one anxiety: how to survive tomorrow. Everyone involuntarily thinks about himself, about his family... My task is not at all to conduct only one campaign among you. We need to have a serious conversation about the country's food situation. According to our statistics, in 17, there was a surplus of grain in those places that produce and export grain, there were 882,000,000 poods. On the other hand, there are areas in the country where there is not enough of their own bread. If you calculate, it turns out that they are missing 322,000,000 poods. Therefore, in one part of the country there is a surplus of 882,000,000 pounds, and in the other, 322,000,000 pounds are not enough...

In the North Caucasus alone there is now a grain surplus of no less than 140,000,000 poods; in order to satisfy hunger, we need 15,000,000 poods per month for the whole country. Just think: 140,000,000 poods of surplus located only in the North Caucasus may be enough for ten months for the entire country. ...Let each of you now promise to provide immediate practical assistance so that we can organize a campaign for bread.” In fact, it was a direct call for robbery. Thanks to the complete absence of glasnost, the paralysis of public life and the complete fragmentation of the country, the Bolsheviks promoted people to leadership positions for whom, under normal conditions, there was only one place - prison. In such conditions, the task of the white command in the fight against the Bolsheviks should have had the shortest goal of capturing Moscow, without being distracted by any other secondary tasks. And to accomplish this main task it was necessary to attract the broadest sections of the people, primarily peasants. In reality, it was the other way around. The volunteer army, instead of marching on Moscow, was firmly stuck in the North Caucasus; the white Ural-Siberian troops could not cross the Volga. All revolutionary changes beneficial to the peasants and people, economic and political, were not recognized by the whites. The first step of their civilian representatives in the liberated territory was a decree that canceled all orders issued by the Provisional Government and the Council of People's Commissars, including those relating to property relations. General Denikin, having absolutely no plan for establishing a new order capable of satisfying the population, consciously or unconsciously, wanted to return Rus' to its original pre-revolutionary position, and the peasants were obliged to pay for the seized lands to their former owners. After this, could the whites count on the peasants supporting their activities? Of course not. The Cossacks refused to go beyond the Donskoy army. And they were right. Voronezh, Saratov and other peasants not only did not fight the Bolsheviks, but also went against the Cossacks. The Cossacks, not without difficulty, were able to cope with their Don peasants and non-residents, but they could not defeat the entire peasantry of central Russia and they understood this perfectly well.

As Russian and non-Russian history shows us, when fundamental changes and decisions are required, we need not just people, but extraordinary individuals, who, unfortunately, were not there during the Russian timelessness. The country needed a government capable of not only issuing decrees, but also having the intelligence and authority to ensure that these decrees were carried out by the people, preferably voluntarily. Such power does not depend on state forms, but is based, as a rule, solely on the abilities and authority of the leader. Bonaparte, having established power, did not look for any forms, but managed to force him to obey his will. He forced both representatives of the royal nobility and people from the sans-culottes to serve France. There were no such consolidating personalities in the white and red movements, and this led to an incredible split and bitterness in the ensuing civil war. But that's a completely different story.

Materials used:
Gordeev A.A. - History of the Cossacks
Mamonov V.F. and others - History of the Cossacks of the Urals. Orenburg-Chelyabinsk 1992
Shibanov N.S. – Orenburg Cossacks of the 20th century
Ryzhkova N.V. - Don Cossacks in the wars of the early twentieth century - 2008
Brusilov A.A. My memories. Voenizdat. M.1983
Krasnov P.N. The Great Don Army. "Patriot" M.1990
Lukomsky A.S. The birth of the Volunteer Army.M.1926
Denikin A.I. How the fight against the Bolsheviks began in the south of Russia. M. 1926

· Cossacks in the Civil War. Part I

· 1918 The birth of the white movement.·

The reasons why the Cossacks of all Cossack regions for the most part rejected the ideas of Bolshevism and entered into an open struggle against them, and in completely unequal conditions, are still not entirely clear and are a mystery to many historians. After all, in everyday life, the Cossacks were the same farmers as 75% of the Russian population, bore the same state burdens, if not more, and were under the same administrative control of the state. With the beginning of the revolution that came after the abdication of the sovereign, the Cossacks within the regions and in the front-line units experienced various psychological stages. During the February rebellion in Petrograd, the Cossacks took a neutral position and remained outside spectators of the unfolding events. The Cossacks saw that despite the presence of significant armed forces in Petrograd, the government not only did not use them, but also strictly prohibited their use against the rebels. During the previous rebellion in 1905-1906, the Cossack troops were the main armed force that restored order in the country, as a result in public opinion they earned the contemptuous title of “whips” and “royal satraps and guardsmen.”

Therefore, in the rebellion that arose in the Russian capital, the Cossacks were inert and left the government to decide the issue of restoring order with the help of other troops. After the abdication of the sovereign and the entry into control of the country by the Provisional Government, the Cossacks considered the continuity of power legitimate and were ready to support the new government. But gradually this attitude changed, and, observing the complete inactivity of the authorities and even the encouragement of unbridled revolutionary excesses, the Cossacks began to gradually move away from the destructive power, and the instructions of the Council of Cossack Troops, operating in Petrograd under the chairmanship of the ataman of the Orenburg army Dutov, became authoritative for them.

Alexander Ilyich Dutov

Inside the Cossack regions, the Cossacks also did not become intoxicated with revolutionary freedoms and, having made some local changes, continued to live as before, without causing any economic, much less social, upheaval. At the front, in military units, the Cossacks accepted the order for the army, which completely changed the foundations of military formations, with bewilderment and, under the new conditions, continued to maintain order and discipline in the units, most often electing their former commanders and superiors. There were no refusals to execute orders and there was no settling of personal scores with the command staff. But the tension gradually increased. The population of the Cossack regions and Cossack units at the front were subjected to active revolutionary propaganda, which involuntarily had to affect their psychology and forced them to listen carefully to the calls and demands of the revolutionary leaders. In the area of ​​the Don Army, one of the important revolutionary acts was the removal of the appointed ataman Count Grabbe, his replacement with an elected ataman of Cossack origin, General Kaledin, and the restoration of the convening of public representatives to the Military Circle, according to the custom that had existed since ancient times, until the reign of Emperor Peter I. After which their lives continued walking without much shock. The issue of relations with the non-Cossack population, which, psychologically, followed the same revolutionary paths as the population of the rest of Russia, became acute. At the front, powerful propaganda was carried out among the Cossack military units, accusing Ataman Kaledin of being counter-revolutionary and having a certain success among the Cossacks. The seizure of power by the Bolsheviks in Petrograd was accompanied by a decree addressed to the Cossacks, in which only geographical names were changed, and it was promised that the Cossacks would be freed from the yoke of generals and the burden of military service and equality and democratic freedoms would be established in everything. The Cossacks had nothing against this.

The Bolsheviks came to power under anti-war slogans and soon began to fulfill their promises. In November 1917, the Council of People's Commissars invited all warring countries to begin peace negotiations, but the Entente countries refused. Then Ulyanov sent a delegation to German-occupied Brest-Litovsk for separate peace negotiations with delegates from Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey and Bulgaria. Germany's ultimatum demands shocked the delegates and caused hesitation even among the Bolsheviks, who were not particularly patriotic, but Ulyanov accepted these conditions. The “obscene Peace of Brest-Litovsk” was concluded, according to which Russia lost about 1 million km² of territory, pledged to demobilize the army and navy, transfer ships and infrastructure of the Black Sea Fleet to Germany, pay an indemnity of 6 billion marks, recognize the independence of Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Finland. The Germans had a free hand to continue the war in the west. At the beginning of March, the German army along the entire front began to advance to occupy the territories given up by the Bolsheviks under the peace treaty. Moreover, Germany, in addition to the agreement, announced to Ulyanov that Ukraine should be considered a province of Germany, to which Ulyanov also agreed. There is a fact in this case that is not widely known. Russia's diplomatic defeat in Brest-Litovsk was caused not only by the corruption, inconsistency and adventurism of the Petrograd negotiators. The “joker” played a key role here. A new partner suddenly appeared in the group of contracting parties - the Ukrainian Central Rada, which, despite all the precariousness of its position, behind the back of the delegation from Petrograd, on February 9 (January 27), 1918, signed a separate peace treaty with Germany in Brest-Litovsk. The next day, the Soviet delegation interrupted the negotiations with the slogan “we will stop the war, but we will not sign peace.” In response, on February 18, German troops launched an offensive along the entire front line. At the same time, the German-Austrian side tightened the peace terms. In view of the complete inability of the Sovietized old army and the beginnings of the Red Army to resist even the limited advance of German troops and the need for a respite to strengthen the Bolshevik regime, on March 3, Russia also signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. After that, the “independent” Ukraine was occupied by the Germans and, as unnecessary, they threw Petliura “from the throne”, placing the puppet Hetman Skoropadsky on him.

Kaiser Wilhelm II accepts the report of P.P. Skoropadsky

Thus, shortly before falling into oblivion, the Second Reich, under the leadership of Kaiser Wilhelm II, captured Ukraine and Crimea.

After the Bolsheviks concluded the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, part of the territory of the Russian Empire turned into zones of occupation of the Central countries. Austro-German troops occupied Finland, the Baltic states, Belarus, Ukraine and eliminated the Soviets there. The Allies vigilantly monitored what was happening in Russia and also tried to ensure their interests connecting them with the former Russia. In addition, there were up to two million prisoners in Russia who could, with the consent of the Bolsheviks, be sent to their countries, and for the Entente powers it was important to prevent the return of prisoners of war to Germany and Austria-Hungary. Ports in the north of Murmansk and Arkhangelsk, and in the Far East Vladivostok served as a means of communication between Russia and its allies. Large warehouses of property and military equipment, delivered by foreigners on orders from the Russian government, were concentrated in these ports. The accumulated cargo amounted to over a million tons, worth up to 2 and a half billion rubles. Cargoes were shamelessly stolen, including by local revolutionary committees. To ensure the safety of cargo, these ports were gradually occupied by the Allies. Since orders imported from England, France and Italy were sent through northern ports, they were occupied by 12,000 British and 11,000 Allied units. Imports from the USA and Japan went through Vladivostok. On July 6, 1918, the Entente declared Vladivostok an international zone, and the city was occupied by Japanese units of 57,000 and other allied units of 13,000 people. But they did not begin to overthrow the Bolshevik government. Only on July 29, the Bolshevik power in Vladivostok was overthrown by the White Czechs under the leadership of the Russian general M. K. Diterichs.

Mikhail Konstantinovich Diterichs

In domestic politics, the Bolsheviks issued decrees that destroyed all social structures: banks, national industry, private property, land ownership, and under the guise of nationalization, simple robbery was often carried out without any state leadership. The inevitable devastation began in the country, for which the Bolsheviks blamed the bourgeoisie and “rotten intellectuals,” and these classes were subjected to the most severe terror, bordering on destruction. It is still completely impossible to understand how this all-destroying force came to power in Russia, given that power was seized in a country that had a thousand-year history and culture. After all, with the same measures, international destructive forces hoped to produce an internal explosion in worried France, transferring up to 10 million francs to French banks for this purpose. But France, by the beginning of the twentieth century, had already exhausted its limit on revolutions and was tired of them. Unfortunately for the businessmen of the revolution, there were forces in the country that were able to unravel the insidious and far-reaching plans of the leaders of the proletariat and resist them.

One of the main reasons that allowed the Bolsheviks to carry out a coup d'etat and then quite quickly seize power in many regions and cities of the Russian Empire was the support of numerous reserve and training battalions stationed throughout Russia that did not want to go to the front. It was Lenin’s promise of an immediate end to the war with Germany that predetermined the transition of the Russian army, which had decayed during the “Kerenschina,” to the side of the Bolsheviks, which ensured their victory. In most regions of the country, the establishment of Bolshevik power took place quickly and peacefully: out of 84 provincial and other large cities, only fifteen saw Soviet power established as a result of armed struggle. Having adopted the “Decree on Peace” on the second day of their stay in power, the Bolsheviks ensured the “triumphant march of Soviet power” across Russia from October 1917 to February 1918.

“Decree of Peace” in the trenches

The relations between the Cossacks and the Bolshevik rulers were determined by the decrees of the Union of Cossack Troops and the Soviet government. On November 22, 1917, the Union of Cossack Troops presented a resolution in which it notified the Soviet government that:

The Cossacks do not seek anything for themselves and do not demand anything for themselves outside the boundaries of their regions. But, guided by the democratic principles of self-determination of nationalities, it will not tolerate on its territories any power other than the people’s, formed by the free agreement of local nationalities without any external or outside influence.

Sending punitive detachments against the Cossack regions, in particular against the Don, will bring civil war to the outskirts, where energetic work is underway to restore public order. This will cause a disruption in transport, will be an obstacle to the delivery of goods, coal, oil and steel to the cities of Russia and will worsen the food supply, leading to disorder in the breadbasket of Russia.

The Cossacks oppose any introduction of foreign troops into Cossack regions without the consent of the military and regional Cossack governments.

In response to the peace declaration of the Union of Cossack Troops, the Bolsheviks issued a decree to open military operations against the south, which read:

Relying on the Black Sea Fleet, arm and organize the Red Guard to occupy the Donetsk coal region.
- From the north, from the headquarters of the Commander-in-Chief, move combined detachments south to the starting points: Gomel, Bryansk, Kharkov, Voronezh.
The most active units will move from the Zhmerinka area to the east to occupy Donbass. This decree created the germ of the fratricidal civil war of Soviet power against the Cossack regions. To survive, the Bolsheviks urgently needed Caucasian oil, Donetsk coal and bread from the southern outskirts.

The outbreak of massive famine pushed Soviet Russia towards the rich south. The Don and Kuban governments did not have well-organized and sufficient forces at their disposal to protect the regions. The units returning from the front did not want to fight, they tried to disperse to the villages, and the young Cossack front-line soldiers entered into an open fight with the old men. In many villages this struggle became fierce, reprisals on both sides were brutal. But there were many Cossacks who came from the front, they were well armed and vociferous, had combat experience, and in most villages victory remained with the front-line youth, heavily infected with Bolshevism. It soon became clear that even in the Cossack regions, strong units could be created only on the basis of volunteerism. To maintain order in the Don and Kuban, their governments used detachments consisting of volunteers: students, cadets, cadets and youth. Many Cossack officers volunteered to form such volunteer (the Cossacks call them partisan) units, but this matter was poorly organized at the headquarters. Permission to form such detachments was given to almost everyone who asked. Many adventurers appeared, even robbers, who simply robbed the population for profit

However, the main threat to the Cossack regions turned out to be regiments returning from the front, since many of those who returned were infected with Bolshevism. The formation of volunteer Red Cossack units also began immediately after the Bolsheviks came to power. At the end of November 1917, at a meeting of representatives of the Cossack units of the Petrograd Military District, it was decided to create revolutionary detachments from the Cossacks of the 5th Cossack division, 1st, 4th and 14th Don regiments and send them to the Don, Kuban and Terek to defeat the counter-revolution and establish Soviet authorities. In January 1918, a congress of front-line Cossacks gathered in the village of Kamenskaya with the participation of delegates from 46 Cossack regiments. The Congress recognized Soviet power and created the Don Military Revolutionary Committee, which declared war on the ataman of the Don Army, General A.M. Kaledin, who opposed the Bolsheviks. Among the command staff of the Don Cossacks, two staff officers, military foreman Golubov and Mironov, were supporters of Bolshevik ideas, and Golubov’s closest collaborator was the sub-sergeant Podtyolkov. In January 1918, the 32nd Don Cossack Regiment returned to the Don from the Romanian Front. Having elected military sergeant F.K. as his commander. Mironov, the regiment supported the establishment of Soviet power, and decided not to go home until the counter-revolution led by Ataman Kaledin was defeated. But the most tragic role on the Don was played by Golubov, who in February occupied Novocherkassk with two regiments of Cossacks he propagated, dispersed the meeting of the Military Circle, arrested General Nazarov, who took office after the death of General Kaledin, and shot him. After a short time, this “hero” of the revolution was shot by the Cossacks right at the rally, and Podtyolkov, who had large sums of money with him, was captured by the Cossacks and, according to their verdict, hanged. Mironov's fate was also tragic. He managed to attract with him a significant number of Cossacks, with whom he fought on the side of the Reds, but, not being satisfied with their orders, he decided to go over with the Cossacks to the side of the fighting Don. Mironov was arrested by the Reds, sent to Moscow, where he was shot. But that will come later. In the meantime, there was great turmoil on the Don. If the Cossack population still hesitated, and only in some villages did the prudent voice of the old people gain the upper hand, then the non-Cossack population entirely sided with the Bolsheviks. The nonresident population in the Cossack regions always envied the Cossacks, who owned a large amount of land. Taking the side of the Bolsheviks, nonresidents hoped to take part in the division of the officers' and landowners' Cossack lands.

Other armed forces in the south were detachments of the emerging Volunteer Army, located in Rostov. On November 2, 1917, General Alekseev arrived on the Don, got in touch with Ataman Kaledin and asked him for permission to form volunteer detachments on the Don. General Alekseev’s goal was to take advantage of the southeastern base of the armed forces to gather the remaining steadfast officers, cadets, and old soldiers and organize them into the army necessary to restore order in Russia. Despite the complete lack of funds, Alekseev eagerly got down to business. On Barochnaya Street, the premises of one of the infirmaries were turned into an officers' dormitory, which became the cradle of volunteerism.

Soon the first donation was received, 400 rubles. This is all that Russian society allocated to its defenders in November. But people simply walked to the Don, without any idea of ​​what awaited them, groping, in the darkness, across the solid Bolshevik sea. They went to where the centuries-old traditions of the Cossack freemen and the names of the leaders whom popular rumor associated with the Don served as a bright beacon. They came exhausted, hungry, ragged, but not discouraged. On December 6 (19), disguised as a peasant, with a false passport, General Kornilov arrived by rail in the Don. He wanted to go further to the Volga, and from there to Siberia. He considered it more correct for General Alekseev to remain in the south of Russia, and he would be given the opportunity to work in Siberia. He argued that in this case they would not interfere with each other and he would be able to organize a big business in Siberia. He was eager for space. But representatives of the “National Center” who arrived in Novocherkassk from Moscow insisted that Kornilov remain in the south of Russia and work together with Kaledin and Alekseev. An agreement was concluded between them, according to which General Alekseev took charge of all financial and political issues, General Kornilov took over the organization and command of the Volunteer Army, General Kaledin continued the formation of the Don Army and the management of the affairs of the Don Army. Kornilov had little faith in the success of work in the south of Russia, where he would have to create a white cause in the territories of the Cossack troops and depend on the military atamans. He said this: “I know Siberia, I believe in Siberia, things can be done there on a broad scale. Here Alekseev alone can easily handle the matter.” Kornilov was eager to go to Siberia with all his soul and heart, he wanted to be released and was not particularly interested in the work of forming the Volunteer Army. Kornilov’s fears that he would have friction and misunderstandings with Alekseev were justified from the first days of their work together. The forced stay of Kornilov in the south of Russia was a big political mistake of the “National Center”. But they believed that if Kornilov left, then many volunteers would follow him and the business started in Novocherkassk could fall apart. The formation of the Good Army progressed slowly, with an average of 75-80 volunteers signing up per day. There were few soldiers; mostly officers, cadets, students, cadets and high school students signed up. There were not enough weapons in the Don warehouses; they had to be taken away from soldiers traveling home on troop echelons passing through Rostov and Novocherkassk, or purchased through buyers in the same echelons. Lack of funds made work extremely difficult. The formation of the Don units progressed even worse.

Generals Alekseev and Kornilov understood that the Cossacks did not want to go to restore order in Russia, but they were confident that the Cossacks would defend their lands. However, the situation in the Cossack regions of the southeast turned out to be much more difficult. The regiments returning from the front were completely neutral in the events taking place, and even showed a tendency towards Bolshevism, declaring that the Bolsheviks had not done anything bad to them.

In addition, inside the Cossack regions there was a difficult struggle against the non-resident population, and in the Kuban and Terek also against the highlanders. The military atamans had the opportunity to use well-trained teams of young Cossacks who were preparing to be sent to the front, and organize the conscription of successive ages of youth. General Kaledin could have had support in this from the elderly and front-line soldiers, who said: “We have served our duty, now we must call on others.” The formation of Cossack youth from conscription age could have given up to 2-3 divisions, which in those days was enough to maintain order on the Don, but this was not done. At the end of December, representatives of the British and French military missions arrived in Novocherkassk.

They asked what had been done, what was planned to be done, after which they stated that they could help, but for now only with money, in the amount of 100 million rubles, in tranches of 10 million per month. The first payment was expected in January, but was never received, and then the situation completely changed. The initial funds for the formation of the Good Army consisted of donations, but they were scanty, mainly due to the unimaginable greed and stinginess of the Russian bourgeoisie and other propertied classes under the given circumstances. It should be said that the stinginess and stinginess of the Russian bourgeoisie is simply legendary. Back in 1909, during a discussion in the State Duma on the issue of the kulaks, P.A. Stolypin spoke prophetic words. He said: “... there is no more greedy and unscrupulous kulak and bourgeois than in Russia. It is no coincidence that in the Russian language the phrases “world-eater kulak and world-eater bourgeois” are used. If they do not change the type of their social behavior, great shocks await us...” He looked as if into water. They did not change social behavior. Almost all the organizers of the white movement point to the low usefulness of their appeals for material assistance to the property classes. However, by mid-January, a small (about 5 thousand people) but very combative and morally strong Volunteer Army had emerged. The Council of People's Commissars demanded the extradition or dispersal of volunteers. Kaledin and Krug answered: “There is no extradition from the Don!” The Bolsheviks, in order to eliminate the counter-revolutionaries, began to pull units loyal to them from the Western and Caucasian fronts to the Don region. They began to threaten the Don from Donbass, Voronezh, Torgovaya and Tikhoretskaya. In addition, the Bolsheviks tightened control on the railways and the influx of volunteers decreased sharply. At the end of January, the Bolsheviks occupied Bataysk and Taganrog, and on January 29, cavalry units moved from Donbass to Novocherkassk. The Don found himself defenseless against the Reds. Ataman Kaledin was confused, did not want bloodshed and decided to transfer his powers to the City Duma and democratic organizations, and then committed life with a shot in the heart. This was a sad but logical result of his activities. The First Don Circle gave pernach to the elected chieftain, but did not give him power.

The region was headed by a Military Government of 14 elders elected from each district. Their meetings had the character of a provincial duma and did not leave any trace in the history of the Don. On November 20, the government addressed the population with a very liberal declaration, convening a congress of the Cossack and peasant population on December 29 to organize the life of the Don region. At the beginning of January, a coalition government was created on a parity basis, 7 seats were given to the Cossacks, 7 to non-residents. The inclusion of demagogues-intellectuals and revolutionary democrats into the government finally led to the paralysis of power. Ataman Kaledin was ruined by his trust in the Don peasants and non-residents, his famous “parity”. He failed to glue the disparate pieces of the population of the Don region together. Under him, the Don split into two camps, Cossacks and Don peasants, along with non-resident workers and artisans. The latter, with few exceptions, were with the Bolsheviks. The Don peasantry, which made up 48% of the region's population, carried away by the broad promises of the Bolsheviks, was not satisfied with the measures of the Don government: the introduction of zemstvos in peasant districts, the attraction of peasants to participate in stanitsa self-government, their widespread admission into the Cossack class and the allocation of three million dessiatines of landowners' land. Under the influence of the incoming socialist element, the Don peasantry demanded a general division of all Cossack land. The numerically smallest working environment (10-11%) was concentrated in the most important centers, was the most restless and did not hide its sympathy for Soviet power. The revolutionary-democratic intelligentsia had not outlived its former psychology and, with amazing blindness, continued its destructive policy, which led to the death of democracy on a nationwide scale. The bloc of Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries reigned in all peasant and non-resident congresses, all kinds of dumas, councils, trade unions and inter-party meetings. There was not a single meeting where resolutions of no confidence in the ataman, the government and the Circle were not passed, or protests against their taking measures against anarchy, criminality and banditry.

They preached neutrality and reconciliation with that force that openly declared: “He who is not with us is against us.” In cities, workers' settlements and peasant settlements, the uprisings against the Cossacks did not subside. Attempts to place units of workers and peasants into Cossack regiments ended in disaster. They betrayed the Cossacks, went to the Bolsheviks and took Cossack officers with them to torture and death. The war took on the character of a class struggle. The Cossacks defended their Cossack rights from the Don workers and peasants. With the death of Ataman Kaledin and the occupation of Novocherkassk by the Bolsheviks, the period of the Great War and the transition to civil war ends in the south.

Alexey Maksimovich Kaledin

On February 12, Bolshevik troops occupied Novocherkassk and military foreman Golubov, in “gratitude” for the fact that General Nazarov once saved him from prison, shot the new chieftain. Having lost all hope of holding Rostov, on the night of February 9 (22), the Good Army of 2,500 soldiers left the city for Aksai, and then moved to Kuban. After the establishment of Bolshevik power in Novocherkassk, terror began. Cossack units were prudently scattered throughout the city in small groups; domination in the city was in the hands of nonresidents and Bolsheviks. On suspicion of connections with the Good Army, officers were mercilessly executed. The robberies and robberies of the Bolsheviks made the Cossacks wary, even the Cossacks of the Golubovo regiments took a wait-and-see attitude.

In the villages where nonresident and Don peasants seized power, the executive committees began dividing the Cossack lands. These outrages soon caused uprisings of the Cossacks in the villages adjacent to Novocherkassk. The leader of the Reds on the Don, Podtyolkov, and the head of the punitive detachment, Antonov, fled to Rostov, then were caught and executed. The occupation of Novocherkassk by the White Cossacks in April coincided with the occupation of Rostov by the Germans, and the return of the Volunteer Army to the Don region. But out of 252 villages of the Donskoy army, only 10 were liberated from the Bolsheviks. The Germans firmly occupied Rostov and Taganrog and the entire western part of the Donetsk district. The outposts of the Bavarian cavalry stood 12 versts from Novocherkassk. Under these conditions, Don was faced with four main tasks:

Immediately convene a new Circle, in which only delegates from the liberated villages could take part

Establish relations with the German authorities, find out their intentions and agree with them to recreate the Don Army

Establish relationships with the Volunteer Army.

On April 28, a general meeting of the Don government and delegates from the villages and military units that took part in the expulsion of Soviet troops from the Don region took place. The composition of this Circle could not have any claim to resolving issues for the entire Army, which is why it limited its work to issues of organizing the struggle for the liberation of the Don. The meeting decided to declare itself the Don Rescue Circle. There were 130 people in it. Even on the democratic Don, this was the most popular assembly. The circle was called gray because there were no intelligentsia on it. At this time, the cowardly intelligentsia sat in cellars and basements, trembling for their lives or being mean to the commissars, signing up for service in the Soviets or trying to get a job in innocent institutions for education, food and finance. She had no time for elections in these troubled times, when both voters and deputies were risking their heads. The circle was elected without party struggle, there was no time for that. The circle was chosen and elected to it exclusively by Cossacks who passionately wanted to save their native Don and were ready to give their lives for this. And these were not empty words, because after the elections, having sent their delegates, the electors themselves dismantled their weapons and went to save the Don. This Circle did not have a political face and had one goal - to save the Don from the Bolsheviks, at any cost and at any cost. He was truly popular, meek, wise and businesslike. And this gray, from overcoat and coat cloth, that is, truly democratic, the Don saved the people's mind. Already by the time the full military circle was convened on August 15, 1918, the Don land was cleared of the Bolsheviks.

The second urgent task for the Don was to resolve relations with the Germans who occupied Ukraine and the western part of the lands of the Don Army. Ukraine also laid claim to the German-occupied Don lands: Donbass, Taganrog and Rostov. The attitude towards the Germans and towards Ukraine was the most pressing issue, and on April 29 the Circle decided to send a plenipotentiary embassy to the Germans in Kyiv in order to find out the reasons for their appearance on the territory of the Don. The negotiations took place in calm conditions. The Germans stated that they were not going to occupy the region and promised to clear the occupied villages, which they soon did. On the same day, the Circle decided to organize a real army, not from partisans, volunteers or vigilantes, but obeying laws and discipline. What Ataman Kaledin with his government and the Circle, consisting of talkative intellectuals, had been stomping around for almost a year, the gray Circle for saving the Don decided at two meetings. The Don Army was still only a project, and the command of the Volunteer Army already wanted to crush it under itself. But Krug answered clearly and specifically: “The supreme command of all military forces, without exception, operating on the territory of the Don Army must belong to the military ataman...”. This answer did not satisfy Denikin; he wanted to have large reinforcements of people and material in the person of the Don Cossacks, and not to have a “allied” army nearby. The circle worked intensively, meetings were held in the morning and evening. He was in a hurry to restore order and was not afraid of reproaches for his desire to return to the old regime. On May 1, the Circle decided: “Unlike the Bolshevik gangs, which do not wear any external insignia, all units participating in the defense of the Don must immediately take on their military appearance and wear shoulder straps and other insignia.” On May 3, as a result of a closed vote, Major General P.N. was elected military chieftain by 107 votes (13 against, 10 abstained). Krasnov. General Krasnov did not accept this election before the Circle adopted the laws that he considered necessary to introduce into the Donskoy army in order to be able to fulfill the tasks assigned to him by the Circle. Krasnov said at the Circle: “Creativity has never been the lot of the team. Raphael's Madonna was created by Raphael, and not by a committee of artists... You are the owners of the Don land, I am your manager. It's all about trust. If you trust me, you accept the laws I propose; if you do not accept them, it means that you do not trust me, you are afraid that I will use the power given to you to the detriment of the army. Then we have nothing to talk about. I cannot lead the army without your complete trust.” When asked by one of the members of the Circle whether he could suggest changing or altering anything in the laws proposed by the ataman, Krasnov replied: “You can. Articles 48,49,50. You can propose any flag except red, any coat of arms except the Jewish five-pointed star, any anthem except the international..." The very next day the Circle reviewed all the laws proposed by the ataman and adopted them. The circle restored the ancient pre-Petrine title “The Great Don Army”. The laws were an almost complete copy of the basic laws of the Russian Empire, with the difference that the rights and prerogatives of the emperor passed to... the ataman. And there was no time for sentimentality.

Before the eyes of the Don Rescue Circle stood the bloody ghosts of Ataman Kaledin, who had shot himself, and Ataman Nazarov, who had been shot.

Anatoly Mikhailovich Nazarov

The Don lay in rubble, it was not only destroyed, but polluted by the Bolsheviks, and the German horses drank the water of the Quiet Don, a river sacred to the Cossacks. The work of the previous Circles led to this, with the decisions of which Kaledin and Nazarov fought, but could not win because they had no power. But these laws created many enemies for the chieftain. As soon as the Bolsheviks were expelled, the intelligentsia, hiding in cellars and basements, came out and started a liberal howl. These laws did not satisfy Denikin either, who saw in them a desire for independence. On May 5, the Circle dispersed, and the ataman was left alone to rule the army. That same evening, his adjutant Yesaul Kulgavov went to Kyiv with handwritten letters to Hetman Skoropadsky and Emperor Wilhelm. The result of the letter was that on May 8, a German delegation came to the ataman, with a statement that the Germans did not pursue any aggressive goals in relation to the Don and would leave Rostov and Taganrog as soon as they saw that complete order had been restored in the Don region. On May 9, Krasnov met with the Kuban ataman Filimonov and the Georgian delegation, and on May 15 in the village of Manychskaya with Alekseev and Denikin. The meeting revealed deep differences between the Don Ataman and the command of the Don Army in both tactics and strategy in the fight against the Bolsheviks. The goal of the rebel Cossacks was to liberate the land of the Don Army from the Bolsheviks. They had no further intentions of waging war outside their territory.

Ataman Krasnov Pyotr Nikolaevich

By the time of the occupation of Novocherkassk and the election of the ataman by the Circle for the Salvation of the Don, all armed forces consisted of six infantry and two cavalry regiments of varying numbers. The junior officers were from the villages and were good, but there was a shortage of hundred and regimental commanders. Having experienced many insults and humiliations during the revolution, many senior commanders at first had distrust of the Cossack movement. The Cossacks were dressed in their semi-military dress, but boots were missing. Up to 30% were dressed in poles and bast shoes. Most wore shoulder straps, and everyone wore white stripes on their caps and hats to distinguish them from the Red Guard. The discipline was fraternal, the officers ate from the same pot with the Cossacks, because they were most often relatives. The headquarters were small; for economic purposes, the regiments had several public figures from the villages who resolved all logistical issues. The battle was fleeting. No trenches or fortifications were built. There were few entrenching tools, and natural laziness prevented the Cossacks from digging in. The tactics were simple. At dawn they began to attack in liquid chains. At this time, an outflanking column was moving along an intricate route towards the enemy’s flank and rear. If the enemy was ten times stronger, it was considered normal for an offensive. As soon as a bypass column appeared, the Reds began to retreat and then the Cossack cavalry rushed at them with a wild, soul-chilling whoop, knocked them over and took them prisoner. Sometimes the battle began with a feigned retreat of twenty versts (this is an old Cossack venter).

The Reds rushed to pursue, and at this time the encircling columns closed behind them and the enemy found themselves in a fire pocket. With such tactics, Colonel Guselshchikov with regiments of 2-3 thousand people smashed and captured entire Red Guard divisions of 10-15 thousand people with convoys and artillery. Cossack custom required that officers go in front, so their losses were very high. For example, the division commander, General Mamantov, was wounded three times and still in chains.

In the attack, the Cossacks were merciless, and they were also merciless towards the captured Red Guards. They were especially harsh towards captured Cossacks, who were considered traitors to the Don. Here the father used to sentence his son to death and did not want to say goodbye to him. It also happened the other way around. At this time, echelons of Red troops were still moving across the Don territory, fleeing to the east. But in June the railway line was cleared of the Reds, and in July, after the Bolsheviks were expelled from the Khopyorsky district, the entire territory of the Don was liberated from the Reds by the Cossacks themselves.

In other Cossack regions the situation was no easier than on the Don. The situation was especially difficult among the Caucasian tribes, where the Russian population was scattered. The North Caucasus was raging. The fall of the central government caused a shock more serious here than anywhere else. Reconciled by the tsarist power, but not having outlived the centuries-old strife and not having forgotten old grievances, the mixed-tribal population became agitated. The Russian element that united it, about 40% of the population consisted of two equal groups, Terek Cossacks and non-residents. But these groups were separated by social conditions, were settling their land scores and could not counter the Bolshevik threat with unity and strength. While Ataman Karaulov was alive, several Terek regiments and some ghost of power survived. On December 13, at the Prokhladnaya station, a crowd of Bolshevik soldiers, on the orders of the Vladikavkaz Soviet of Deputies, unhooked the ataman’s carriage, drove it to a distant dead end and opened fire on the carriage. Karaulov was killed. In fact, on the Terek, power passed to local councils and bands of soldiers of the Caucasian Front, who flowed in a continuous stream from the Transcaucasus and, not being able to penetrate further into their native places, due to the complete blockage of the Caucasian highways, settled like locusts across the Terek-Dagestan region. They terrorized the population, planted new councils or hired themselves into the service of existing ones, bringing fear, blood and destruction everywhere. This flow served as the most powerful conductor of Bolshevism, which swept the nonresident Russian population (due to the thirst for land), touched the Cossack intelligentsia (due to the thirst for power) and greatly confused the Terek Cossacks (due to the fear of “going against the people”). As for the mountaineers, they were extremely conservative in their way of life, which very little reflected social and land inequality. True to their customs and traditions, they were governed by their national councils and were alien to the ideas of Bolshevism. But the mountaineers quickly and willingly accepted the practical aspects of central anarchy and intensified violence and robbery. By disarming the passing troop trains, they had a lot of weapons and ammunition. On the basis of the Caucasian Native Corps, they formed national military formations.

Cossack regions of Russia

After the death of Ataman Karaulov, an overwhelming struggle with the Bolshevik detachments that filled the region and the aggravation of controversial issues with neighbors - Kabardians, Chechens, Ossetians, Ingush - the Terek Army was turned into a republic, part of the RSFSR. Quantitatively, Terek Cossacks in the Terek region made up 20% of the population, nonresidents - 20%, Ossetians - 17%, Chechens - 16%, Kabardians - 12% and Ingush - 4%. The most active among other peoples were the smallest - the Ingush, who fielded a strong and well-armed detachment. They robbed everyone and kept Vladikavkaz in constant fear, which they captured and plundered in January. When Soviet power was established in Dagestan, as well as on the Terek, on March 9, 1918, the Council of People's Commissars set its first goal to break the Terek Cossacks, destroying their special advantages. Armed expeditions of mountaineers were sent to the villages, robberies, violence and murders were carried out, lands were taken away and handed over to the Ingush and Chechens. In this difficult situation, the Terek Cossacks lost heart. While the mountain peoples created their armed forces through improvisation, the natural Cossack army, which had 12 well-organized regiments, disintegrated, dispersed and disarmed at the request of the Bolsheviks. However, the excesses of the Reds led to the fact that on June 18, 1918, the uprising of the Terek Cossacks began under the leadership of Bicherakhov. The Cossacks defeat the Red troops and blockade their remnants in Grozny and Kizlyar. On July 20, in Mozdok, the Cossacks were convened for a congress, at which they decided on an armed uprising against Soviet power. The Terets established contact with the command of the Volunteer Army, the Terek Cossacks created a combat detachment of up to 12,000 people with 40 guns and resolutely took the path of fighting the Bolsheviks.

The Orenburg Army under the command of Ataman Dutov, the first to declare independence from the power of the Soviets, was the first to be invaded by detachments of workers and red soldiers, who began robbery and repression. Veteran of the fight against the Soviets, Orenburg Cossack General I.G. Akulinin recalled: “The stupid and cruel policy of the Bolsheviks, their undisguised hatred of the Cossacks, the desecration of Cossack shrines and, especially, bloody massacres, requisitions, indemnities and robbery in the villages - all this opened their eyes to the essence of Soviet power and forced them to take up arms. . The Bolsheviks could not lure the Cossacks with anything. The Cossacks had land, and they regained their freedom in the form of the broadest self-government in the first days of the February Revolution.” A turning point gradually occurred in the mood of the ordinary and front-line Cossacks; they increasingly began to speak out against the violence and tyranny of the new government. If in January 1918, Ataman Dutov, under pressure from Soviet troops, left Orenburg, and he had barely three hundred active fighters left, then on the night of April 4, sleeping Orenburg was raided by more than 1,000 Cossacks, and on July 3, power was restored in Orenburg passed into the hands of the ataman.

In the area of ​​the Ural Cossacks, the resistance was more successful, despite the small number of the Troops. Uralsk was not occupied by the Bolsheviks. From the beginning of the birth of Bolshevism, the Ural Cossacks did not accept its ideology and back in March they easily dispersed the local Bolshevik revolutionary committees. The main reasons were that among the Urals there were no non-residents, there was a lot of land, and the Cossacks were Old Believers who more strictly guarded their religious and moral principles. The Cossack regions of Asian Russia generally occupied a special position. All of them were small in composition, most of them were historically formed in special conditions by state measures, for the purposes of state necessity, and their historical existence was determined by insignificant periods. Despite the fact that these troops did not have firmly established Cossack traditions, foundations and skills for forms of statehood, they all turned out to be hostile to the approaching Bolshevism. In mid-April 1918, the troops of Ataman Semyonov, about 1000 bayonets and sabers, went on the offensive from Manchuria to Transbaikalia, against 5.5 thousand for the Reds. At the same time, the uprising of the Transbaikal Cossacks began. By May, Semenov’s troops approached Chita, but were unable to take it immediately. The battles between Semyonov’s Cossacks and the red detachments, consisting mainly of former political prisoners and captured Hungarians, in Transbaikalia took place with varying degrees of success. However, at the end of July, the Cossacks defeated the Red troops and took Chita on August 28. Soon the Amur Cossacks drove the Bolsheviks out of their capital Blagoveshchensk, and the Ussuri Cossacks took Khabarovsk. Thus, under the command of their atamans: Transbaikal - Semenov, Ussuri - Kalmykov, Semirechensky - Annenkov, Ural - Tolstov, Siberian - Ivanov, Orenburg - Dutov, Astrakhan - Prince Tundutov, they entered into a decisive battle. In the fight against the Bolsheviks, the Cossack regions fought exclusively for their lands and law and order, and their actions, according to historians, were in the nature of a guerrilla war.

White Cossacks

A huge role along the entire length of the Siberian railway was played by the troops of the Czechoslovak legions, formed by the Russian government from Czech and Slovak prisoners of war, numbering up to 45,000 people. By the beginning of the revolution, the Czech corps stood in the rear of the Southwestern Front in Ukraine. In the eyes of the Austro-Germans, legionnaires, like former prisoners of war, were traitors. When the Germans attacked Ukraine in March 1918, the Czechs offered strong resistance to them, but most Czechs did not see their place in Soviet Russia and wanted to return to the European front. According to the agreement with the Bolsheviks, Czech trains were sent towards Siberia to board ships in Vladivostok and send them to Europe. In addition to the Czechoslovaks, there were many captured Hungarians in Russia, who mostly sympathized with the Reds. The Czechoslovakians had a centuries-old and fierce hostility and enmity with the Hungarians (how can one not recall the immortal works of J. Hasek in this regard). Due to fear of attacks on the way by the Hungarian Red units, the Czechs resolutely refused to obey the Bolshevik order to surrender all weapons, which is why it was decided to disperse the Czech legions. They were divided into four groups with a distance between groups of echelons of 1000 kilometers, so that the echelons with Czechs stretched throughout Siberia from the Volga to Transbaikalia. The Czech legions played a colossal role in the Russian civil war, since after their rebellion the fight against the Soviets sharply intensified.

Czech Legion on the way along the Trans-Siberian Railway

Despite the agreements, there were considerable misunderstandings in the relations between the Czechs, Hungarians and local revolutionary committees. As a result, on May 25, 1918, 4.5 thousand Czechs rebelled in Mariinsk, and on May 26, the Hungarians provoked an uprising of 8.8 thousand Czechs in Chelyabinsk. Then, with the support of Czechoslovak troops, the Bolshevik government was overthrown on May 26 in Novonikolaevsk, May 29 in Penza, May 30 in Syzran, May 31 in Tomsk and Kurgan, June 7 in Omsk, June 8 in Samara and June 18 in Krasnoyarsk. The formation of Russian combat units began in the liberated areas. On July 5, Russian and Czechoslovak troops occupy Ufa, and on July 25 they take Yekaterinburg. At the end of 1918, the Czechoslovak legionnaires themselves began a gradual retreat to the Far East. But, having participated in battles in Kolchak’s army, they would finally finish their retreat and leave Vladivostok for France only at the beginning of 1920.

White Bohemian armored train “Orlik”

In such conditions, the Russian White movement began in the Volga region and Siberia, not counting the independent actions of the Ural and Orenburg Cossack troops, which began the fight against the Bolsheviks immediately after they came to power. On June 8, the Committee of the Constituent Assembly (Komuch) was created in Samara, liberated from the Reds. He declared himself a temporary revolutionary government, which was supposed to spread over the entire territory of Russia and transfer control of the country to a legally elected Constituent Assembly. The rising population of the Volga region began a successful struggle against the Bolsheviks, but in the liberated places control ended up in the hands of the fleeing fragments of the Provisional Government. These heirs and participants in destructive activities, having formed a government, carried out the same destructive work. At the same time, Komuch created his own armed forces - the People's Army. On June 9, Lieutenant Colonel Kappel began commanding a detachment of 350 people in Samara. In mid-June, the replenished detachment took Syzran, Stavropol Volzhsky (now Togliatti), and also inflicted a heavy defeat on the Reds near Melekes. On July 21, Kappel takes Simbirsk, defeating the superior forces of the Soviet commander Guy defending the city. As a result, by the beginning of August 1918, the territory of the Constituent Assembly extended from west to east for 750 versts from Syzran to Zlatoust, from north to south for 500 versts from Simbirsk to Volsk. On August 7, Kappel’s troops, having previously defeated the red river flotilla that came out to meet them at the mouth of the Kama, take Kazan. There they seize part of the gold reserves of the Russian Empire (650 million gold rubles in coins, 100 million rubles in credit notes, gold bars, platinum and other valuables), as well as huge warehouses with weapons, ammunition, medicines, and ammunition.

This gave the Samara government a solid financial and material base. With the capture of Kazan, the Academy of the General Staff, located in the city, headed by General A.I. Andogsky, moved into the anti-Bolshevik camp in its entirety.

Vladimir Oskarovich Kappel

A government of industrialists was formed in Yekaterinburg, a Siberian government was formed in Omsk, and the government of Ataman Semyonov, who led the Transbaikal Army, was formed in Chita. The Allies dominated in Vladivostok. Then General Horvath arrived from Harbin, and as many as three authorities were formed: from the proteges of the Allies, General Horvath and from the railway board. Such fragmentation of the anti-Bolshevik front in the east required unification, and a meeting was convened in Ufa to select a single authoritative state power. The situation in the units of the anti-Bolshevik forces was unfavorable. The Czechs did not want to fight in Russia and demanded that they be sent to the European fronts against the Germans. There was no trust in the Siberian government and members of the Komuch among the troops and the people. In addition, the representative of England, General Knox, stated that until a firm government was created, the delivery of supplies from the British would be stopped.

Alfred William Knox

Under these conditions, Admiral Kolchak joined the government and in the fall he carried out a coup and was proclaimed head of government and supreme commander with the transfer of full power to him.

In the south of Russia events developed as follows. After the Reds occupied Novocherkassk in early 1918, the Volunteer Army retreated to Kuban. During the campaign to Ekaterinodar, the army, having endured all the difficulties of the winter campaign, later nicknamed the “ice campaign,” fought continuously.

Lavr Georgievich Kornilov

After the death of General Kornilov, who was killed near Yekaterinodar on March 31 (April 13), the army again made its way with a large number of prisoners to the territory of the Don, where by that time the Cossacks, who had rebelled against the Bolsheviks, had begun to clear their territory. Only by May the army found itself in conditions that allowed it to rest and replenish itself for the further fight against the Bolsheviks. Although the attitude of the Volunteer Army command towards the German army was irreconcilable, it, having no weapons, tearfully begged Ataman Krasnov to send the Volunteer Army weapons, shells and cartridges that it received from the German army. Ataman Krasnov, in his colorful expression, receiving military equipment from the hostile Germans, washed them in the clean waters of the Don and transferred part of the Volunteer Army. Kuban was still occupied by the Bolsheviks. In Kuban, the break with the center, which occurred on the Don due to the collapse of the Provisional Government, occurred earlier and more acutely. Back on October 5, with a strong protest from the Provisional Government, the regional Cossack Rada adopted a resolution on separating the region into an independent Kuban Republic. At the same time, the right to elect members of the self-government body was granted only to the Cossack, mountain population and old-time peasants, that is, almost half of the region’s population was deprived of voting rights. A military ataman, Colonel Filimonov, was placed at the head of the socialist government. The discord between the Cossack and nonresident populations took on increasingly acute forms. Not only the nonresident population, but also the front-line Cossacks stood up against the Rada and the government. Bolshevism came to this mass. The Kuban units returning from the front did not go to war against the government, did not want to fight the Bolsheviks and did not follow the orders of their elected authorities. An attempt, following the example of Don, to create a government based on “parity” ended in the same way, paralysis of power. Everywhere, in every village and village, the Red Guard from outside the city gathered, and they were joined by a part of the Cossack front-line soldiers, who were poorly subordinate to the center, but followed exactly its policy. These undisciplined, but well-armed and violent gangs began to impose Soviet power, redistribute land, confiscate grain surpluses and socialize, and simply rob wealthy Cossacks and behead the Cossacks - persecute officers, non-Bolshevik intelligentsia, priests, and authoritative old men. And above all, to disarmament. It is worthy of surprise with what complete non-resistance the Cossack villages, regiments and batteries gave up their rifles, machine guns, and guns. When the villages of the Yeisk department rebelled at the end of April, it was a completely unarmed militia. The Cossacks had no more than 10 rifles per hundred; the rest were armed with what they could. Some attached daggers or scythes to long sticks, others took pitchforks, others took spears, and others simply shovels and axes. Punitive detachments with... Cossack weapons came out against defenseless villages. By the beginning of April, all non-resident villages and 85 out of 87 villages were Bolshevik. But the Bolshevism of the villages was purely external. Often only the names changed: the ataman became a commissar, the village assembly became a council, the village board became an iskom.

Where executive committees were captured by non-residents, their decisions were sabotaged, re-elected every week. There was a stubborn, but passive, without inspiration or enthusiasm, struggle between the age-old way of Cossack democracy and life with the new government. There was a desire to preserve Cossack democracy, but there was no courage. All this, in addition, was heavily implicated in the pro-Ukrainian separatism of some Cossacks who had Dnieper roots. The pro-Ukrainian figure Luka Bych, who headed the Rada, declared: “Helping the Volunteer Army means preparing for the reabsorption of Kuban by Russia.” Under these conditions, Ataman Shkuro gathered the first partisan detachment, located in the Stavropol region, where the Council was meeting, intensified the struggle and presented the Council with an ultimatum. The uprising of the Kuban Cossacks quickly gained strength. In June, the 8,000-strong Volunteer Army began its second campaign against Kuban, which had completely rebelled against the Bolsheviks. This time White was lucky. General Denikin successively defeated Kalnin’s 30,000-strong army near Belaya Glina and Tikhoretskaya, then in a fierce battle near Yekaterinodar, Sorokin’s 30,000-strong army. On July 21, the Whites occupied Stavropol, and on August 17, Ekaterinodar. Blocked on the Taman Peninsula, a 30,000-strong group of Reds under the command of Kovtyukh, the so-called “Taman Army,” along the Black Sea coast fought its way across the Kuban River, where the remnants of the defeated armies of Kalnin and Sorokin fled.

Epifan Iovich Kovtyukh

By the end of August, the territory of the Kuban army is completely cleared of the Bolsheviks, and the strength of the White Army reaches 40 thousand bayonets and sabers. However, having entered the territory of Kuban, Denikin issued a decree addressed to the Kuban ataman and the government, demanding:

Full of tension from Kuban for its speedy liberation from the Bolsheviks
- all priority units of the Kuban military forces should henceforth be part of the Volunteer Army to carry out national tasks
- in the future, no separatism should be shown on the part of the liberated Kuban Cossacks.

Such gross interference by the command of the Volunteer Army in the internal affairs of the Kuban Cossacks had a negative impact. General Denikin led an army that had no defined territory, no people under his control, and, even worse, no political ideology. The commander of the Don Army, General Denisov, even called the volunteers “wandering musicians” in his hearts. General Denikin's ideas were oriented towards armed struggle. Not having sufficient means for this, General Denikin demanded the subordination of the Cossack regions of the Don and Kuban to him in order to fight. Don was in better conditions and was not at all bound by Denikin's instructions.

Anton Ivanovich Denikin

The German army was perceived on the Don as a real force that contributed to getting rid of Bolshevik domination and terror. The Don government entered into contact with the German command and established fruitful cooperation. Relations with the Germans resulted in a purely business form. The rate of the German mark was set at 75 kopecks of the Don currency, a price was made for a Russian rifle with 30 rounds of one pound of wheat or rye, and other supply agreements were concluded. From the German army through Kiev in the first month and a half the Don Army received: 11,651 rifles, 88 machine guns, 46 guns, 109 thousand artillery shells, 11.5 million rifle cartridges, of which 35 thousand artillery shells and about 3 million rifle cartridges. At the same time, all the shame of peaceful relations with an irreconcilable enemy fell solely on Ataman Krasnov. As for the Supreme Command, according to the laws of the Don Army, it could only belong to the Military Ataman, and before his election - to the marching Ataman. This discrepancy led to the Don demanding the return of all the Don people from the Dorovol army. The relationship between the Don and the Good Army became not an alliance, but a relationship of fellow travelers.

In addition to tactics, there were also great differences within the white movement in strategy, policy and war goals. The goal of the Cossack masses was to liberate their land from the Bolshevik invasion, establish order in their region and provide the Russian people with the opportunity to arrange their destiny according to their own wishes. Meanwhile, the forms of civil war and the organization of the armed forces returned the art of war to the era of the 19th century. The successes of the troops then depended solely on the qualities of the commander who directly controlled the troops. Good commanders of the 19th century did not scatter the main forces, but directed them towards one main goal: the capture of the enemy’s political center. With the capture of the center, the government of the country is paralyzed and the conduct of the war becomes more complicated. The Council of People's Commissars, sitting in Moscow, was in extremely difficult conditions, reminiscent of the situation in Muscovite Rus' in the 14th-15th centuries, limited by the Oka and Volga rivers. Moscow was cut off from all types of supplies, and the goals of the Soviet rulers were reduced to obtaining basic food supplies and a piece of daily bread. In the pathetic calls of the leaders there were no longer any high motives emanating from the ideas of Marx; they sounded cynical, figurative and simple, as they once sounded in the speeches of the people's leader Pugachev: “Go, take everything and destroy everyone who stands in your way.” . People's Commissar of Military and Marine Bronstein (Trotsky), in his speech on June 9, 1918, indicated simple and clear goals: “Comrades! Among all the questions that trouble our hearts, there is one simple question - the question of our daily bread. All our thoughts, all our ideals are now dominated by one concern, one anxiety: how to survive tomorrow. Everyone involuntarily thinks about himself, about his family... My task is not at all to conduct only one campaign among you. We need to have a serious conversation about the country's food situation. According to our statistics, in 17, there was a surplus of grain in those places that produce and export grain, there were 882,000,000 poods. On the other hand, there are areas in the country where there is not enough of their own bread.

In the North Caucasus alone there is now a grain surplus of no less than 140,000,000 poods; in order to satisfy hunger, we need 15,000,000 poods per month for the whole country. Just think: 140,000,000 poods of surplus located only in the North Caucasus may be enough for ten months for the entire country. ...Let each of you now promise to provide immediate practical assistance so that we can organize a campaign for bread.” In fact, it was a direct call for robbery. Thanks to the complete absence of glasnost, the paralysis of public life and the complete fragmentation of the country, the Bolsheviks promoted people to leadership positions for whom, under normal conditions, there was only one place - prison. In such conditions, the task of the white command in the fight against the Bolsheviks should have had the shortest goal of capturing Moscow, without being distracted by any other secondary tasks. And to accomplish this main task it was necessary to attract the broadest sections of the people, primarily peasants. In reality, it was the other way around. The volunteer army, instead of marching on Moscow, was firmly stuck in the North Caucasus; the white Ural-Siberian troops could not cross the Volga. All revolutionary changes beneficial to the peasants and people, economic and political, were not recognized by the whites. The first step of their civilian representatives in the liberated territory was a decree that canceled all orders issued by the Provisional Government and the Council of People's Commissars, including those relating to property relations. General Denikin, having absolutely no plan for establishing a new order capable of satisfying the population, consciously or unconsciously, wanted to return Rus' to its original pre-revolutionary position, and the peasants were obliged to pay for the seized lands to their former owners. After this, could the whites count on the peasants supporting their activities? Of course not. The Cossacks refused to go beyond the Donskoy army. And they were right. Voronezh, Saratov and other peasants not only did not fight the Bolsheviks, but also went against the Cossacks. The Cossacks, not without difficulty, were able to cope with their Don peasants and non-residents, but they could not defeat the entire peasantry of central Russia and they understood this perfectly well.

As Russian and non-Russian history shows us, when fundamental changes and decisions are required, we need not just people, but extraordinary individuals, who, unfortunately, were not there during the Russian timelessness. The country needed a government capable of not only issuing decrees, but also having the intelligence and authority to ensure that these decrees were carried out by the people, preferably voluntarily. Such power does not depend on state forms, but is based, as a rule, solely on the abilities and authority of the leader. Bonaparte, having established power, did not look for any forms, but managed to force him to obey his will. He forced both representatives of the royal nobility and people from the sans-culottes to serve France. There were no such consolidating personalities in the white and red movements, and this led to an incredible split and bitterness in the ensuing civil war. But that's a completely different story.

The reasons why the Cossacks of all Cossack regions for the most part rejected the destructive ideas of Bolshevism and entered into an open struggle against them, and in completely unequal conditions, are still not entirely clear and constitute a mystery for many historians. After all, in everyday life, the Cossacks were the same farmers as 75% of the Russian population, bore the same state burdens, if not more, and were under the same administrative control of the state. With the beginning of the revolution that came after the abdication of the sovereign, the Cossacks within the regions and in the front-line units experienced various psychological stages. During the February rebellion in Petrograd, the Cossacks took a neutral position and remained outside spectators of the unfolding events. The Cossacks saw that despite the presence of significant armed forces in Petrograd, the government not only did not use them, but also strictly prohibited their use against the rebels. During the previous rebellion in 1905-1906, the Cossack troops were the main armed force that restored order in the country, as a result in public opinion they earned the contemptuous title of “whips” and “royal satraps and guardsmen.” Therefore, in the rebellion that arose in the Russian capital, the Cossacks were inert and left the government to decide the issue of restoring order with the help of other troops. After the abdication of the sovereign and the entry into control of the country by the Provisional Government, the Cossacks considered the continuity of power legitimate and were ready to support the new government. But gradually this attitude changed, and, observing the complete inactivity of the authorities and even the encouragement of unbridled revolutionary excesses, the Cossacks began to gradually move away from the destructive power, and the instructions of the Council of Cossack Troops, operating in Petrograd under the chairmanship of the ataman of the Orenburg army Dutov, became authoritative for them.

Inside the Cossack regions, the Cossacks also did not become intoxicated with revolutionary freedoms and, having made some local changes, continued to live as before, without causing any economic, much less social, upheaval. At the front, in military units, the Cossacks accepted the order for the army, which completely changed the foundations of military formations, with bewilderment and, under the new conditions, continued to maintain order and discipline in the units, most often electing their former commanders and superiors. There were no refusals to execute orders and there was no settling of personal scores with the command staff. But the tension gradually increased. The population of the Cossack regions and Cossack units at the front were subjected to active revolutionary propaganda, which involuntarily had to affect their psychology and forced them to listen carefully to the calls and demands of the revolutionary leaders. In the area of ​​the Don Army, one of the important revolutionary acts was the removal of the appointed ataman Count Grabbe, his replacement with an elected ataman of Cossack origin, General Kaledin, and the restoration of the convening of public representatives to the Military Circle, according to the custom that had existed since ancient times, until the reign of Emperor Peter I. After which their lives continued walking without much shock. The issue of relations with the non-Cossack population, which, psychologically, followed the same revolutionary paths as the population of the rest of Russia, became acute. At the front, powerful propaganda was carried out among the Cossack military units, accusing Ataman Kaledin of being counter-revolutionary and having a certain success among the Cossacks. The seizure of power by the Bolsheviks in Petrograd was accompanied by a decree addressed to the Cossacks, in which only geographical names were changed, and it was promised that the Cossacks would be freed from the yoke of generals and the burden of military service and equality and democratic freedoms would be established in everything. The Cossacks had nothing against this.

Rice. 1 Region of the Don Army

The Bolsheviks came to power under anti-war slogans and soon began to fulfill their promises. In November 1917, the Council of People's Commissars invited all warring countries to begin peace negotiations, but the Entente countries refused. Then Ulyanov sent a delegation to German-occupied Brest-Litovsk for separate peace negotiations with delegates from Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey and Bulgaria. Germany's ultimatum demands shocked the delegates and caused hesitation even among the Bolsheviks, who were not particularly patriotic, but Ulyanov accepted these conditions. The “obscene Peace of Brest-Litovsk” was concluded, according to which Russia lost about 1 million km² of territory, pledged to demobilize the army and navy, transfer ships and infrastructure of the Black Sea Fleet to Germany, pay an indemnity of 6 billion marks, recognize the independence of Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Finland. The Germans had a free hand to continue the war in the west. At the beginning of March, the German army along the entire front began to advance to occupy the territories given up by the Bolsheviks under the peace treaty. Moreover, Germany, in addition to the agreement, announced to Ulyanov that Ukraine should be considered a province of Germany, to which Ulyanov also agreed. There is a fact in this case that is not widely known. Russia's diplomatic defeat in Brest-Litovsk was caused not only by the corruption, inconsistency and adventurism of the Petrograd negotiators. The “joker” played a key role here. A new partner suddenly appeared in the group of contracting parties - the Ukrainian Central Rada, which, despite all the precariousness of its position, behind the back of the delegation from Petrograd, on February 9 (January 27), 1918, signed a separate peace treaty with Germany in Brest-Litovsk. The next day, the Soviet delegation interrupted the negotiations with the slogan “we will stop the war, but we will not sign peace.” In response, on February 18, German troops launched an offensive along the entire front line. At the same time, the German-Austrian side tightened the peace terms. In view of the complete inability of the Sovietized old army and the beginnings of the Red Army to resist even the limited advance of German troops and the need for a respite to strengthen the Bolshevik regime, on March 3, Russia also signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. After that, the “independent” Ukraine was occupied by the Germans and, as unnecessary, they threw Petliura “from the throne”, placing the puppet Hetman Skoropadsky on him. Thus, shortly before falling into oblivion, the Second Reich, under the leadership of Kaiser Wilhelm II, captured Ukraine and Crimea.

After the Bolsheviks concluded the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, part of the territory of the Russian Empire turned into zones of occupation of the Central countries. Austro-German troops occupied Finland, the Baltic states, Belarus, Ukraine and eliminated the Soviets there. The Allies vigilantly monitored what was happening in Russia and also tried to ensure their interests connecting them with the former Russia. In addition, there were up to two million prisoners in Russia who could, with the consent of the Bolsheviks, be sent to their countries, and for the Entente powers it was important to prevent the return of prisoners of war to Germany and Austria-Hungary. Ports in the north of Murmansk and Arkhangelsk, and in the Far East Vladivostok served as a means of communication between Russia and its allies. Large warehouses of property and military equipment, delivered by foreigners on orders from the Russian government, were concentrated in these ports. The accumulated cargo amounted to over a million tons, worth up to 2 and a half billion rubles. Cargoes were shamelessly stolen, including by local revolutionary committees. To ensure the safety of cargo, these ports were gradually occupied by the Allies. Since orders imported from England, France and Italy were sent through northern ports, they were occupied by 12,000 British and 11,000 Allied units. Imports from the USA and Japan went through Vladivostok. On July 6, 1918, the Entente declared Vladivostok an international zone, and the city was occupied by Japanese units of 57,000 and other allied units of 13,000 people. But they did not begin to overthrow the Bolshevik government. Only on July 29, the Bolshevik power in Vladivostok was overthrown by the White Czechs under the leadership of the Russian general M. K. Diterichs.

In domestic politics, the Bolsheviks issued decrees that destroyed all social structures: banks, national industry, private property, land ownership, and under the guise of nationalization, simple robbery was often carried out without any state leadership. The inevitable devastation began in the country, for which the Bolsheviks blamed the bourgeoisie and “rotten intellectuals,” and these classes were subjected to the most severe terror, bordering on destruction. It is still completely impossible to understand how this all-destroying force came to power in Russia, given that power was seized in a country that had a thousand-year history and culture. After all, with the same measures, international destructive forces hoped to produce an internal explosion in worried France, transferring up to 10 million francs to French banks for this purpose. But France, by the beginning of the twentieth century, had already exhausted its limit on revolutions and was tired of them. Unfortunately for the businessmen of the revolution, there were forces in the country that were able to unravel the insidious and far-reaching plans of the leaders of the proletariat and resist them. This was written about in more detail in Military Review in the article “How America saved Western Europe from the specter of world revolution.”

One of the main reasons that allowed the Bolsheviks to carry out a coup d'etat and then quite quickly seize power in many regions and cities of the Russian Empire was the support of numerous reserve and training battalions stationed throughout Russia that did not want to go to the front. It was Lenin’s promise of an immediate end to the war with Germany that predetermined the transition of the Russian army, which had decayed during the “Kerenschina,” to the side of the Bolsheviks, which ensured their victory. In most regions of the country, the establishment of Bolshevik power took place quickly and peacefully: out of 84 provincial and other large cities, only fifteen saw Soviet power established as a result of armed struggle. Having adopted the “Decree on Peace” on the second day of their stay in power, the Bolsheviks ensured the “triumphant march of Soviet power” across Russia from October 1917 to February 1918.

The relations between the Cossacks and the Bolshevik rulers were determined by the decrees of the Union of Cossack Troops and the Soviet government. On November 22, 1917, the Union of Cossack Troops presented a resolution in which it notified the Soviet government that:
- The Cossacks do not seek anything for themselves and do not demand anything for themselves outside the boundaries of their regions. But, guided by the democratic principles of self-determination of nationalities, it will not tolerate on its territories any power other than the people’s, formed by the free agreement of local nationalities without any external or outside influence.
- Sending punitive detachments against the Cossack regions, in particular against the Don, will bring civil war to the outskirts, where energetic work is underway to establish public order. This will cause a disruption in transport, will be an obstacle to the delivery of goods, coal, oil and steel to the cities of Russia and will worsen the food supply, leading to disorder in the breadbasket of Russia.
- The Cossacks oppose any introduction of foreign troops into the Cossack regions without the consent of the military and regional Cossack governments.
In response to the peace declaration of the Union of Cossack Troops, the Bolsheviks issued a decree to open military operations against the south, which read:
- Relying on the Black Sea Fleet, arm and organize the Red Guard to occupy the Donetsk coal region.
- From the north, from the headquarters of the Commander-in-Chief, move combined detachments to the south to the starting points: Gomel, Bryansk, Kharkov, Voronezh.
- The most active units should move from the Zhmerinka area to the east to occupy Donbass.

This decree created the germ of the fratricidal civil war of Soviet power against the Cossack regions. To survive, the Bolsheviks urgently needed Caucasian oil, Donetsk coal and bread from the southern outskirts. The outbreak of massive famine pushed Soviet Russia towards the rich south. The Don and Kuban governments did not have well-organized and sufficient forces at their disposal to protect the regions. The units returning from the front did not want to fight, they tried to disperse to the villages, and the young Cossack front-line soldiers entered into an open fight with the old men. In many villages this struggle became fierce, reprisals on both sides were brutal. But there were many Cossacks who came from the front, they were well armed and vociferous, had combat experience, and in most villages victory remained with the front-line youth, heavily infected with Bolshevism. It soon became clear that even in the Cossack regions, strong units could be created only on the basis of volunteerism. To maintain order in the Don and Kuban, their governments used detachments consisting of volunteers: students, cadets, cadets and youth. Many Cossack officers volunteered to form such volunteer (the Cossacks call them partisan) units, but this matter was poorly organized at the headquarters. Permission to form such detachments was given to almost everyone who asked. Many adventurers appeared, even robbers, who simply robbed the population for profit. However, the main threat to the Cossack regions turned out to be regiments returning from the front, since many of those who returned were infected with Bolshevism. The formation of volunteer Red Cossack units also began immediately after the Bolsheviks came to power. At the end of November 1917, at a meeting of representatives of the Cossack units of the Petrograd Military District, it was decided to create revolutionary detachments from the Cossacks of the 5th Cossack division, 1st, 4th and 14th Don regiments and send them to the Don, Kuban and Terek to defeat the counter-revolution and establish Soviet authorities. In January 1918, a congress of front-line Cossacks gathered in the village of Kamenskaya with the participation of delegates from 46 Cossack regiments. The Congress recognized Soviet power and created the Don Military Revolutionary Committee, which declared war on the ataman of the Don Army, General A.M. Kaledin, who opposed the Bolsheviks. Among the command staff of the Don Cossacks, two staff officers, military foreman Golubov and Mironov, were supporters of Bolshevik ideas, and Golubov’s closest collaborator was the sub-sergeant Podtyolkov. In January 1918, the 32nd Don Cossack Regiment returned to the Don from the Romanian Front. Having elected military sergeant F.K. as his commander. Mironov, the regiment supported the establishment of Soviet power, and decided not to go home until the counter-revolution led by Ataman Kaledin was defeated. But the most tragic role on the Don was played by Golubov, who in February occupied Novocherkassk with two regiments of Cossacks he propagated, dispersed the meeting of the Military Circle, arrested General Nazarov, who took office after the death of General Kaledin, and shot him. After a short time, this “hero” of the revolution was shot by the Cossacks right at the rally, and Podtyolkov, who had large sums of money with him, was captured by the Cossacks and, according to their verdict, hanged. Mironov's fate was also tragic. He managed to attract with him a significant number of Cossacks, with whom he fought on the side of the Reds, but, not being satisfied with their orders, he decided to go over with the Cossacks to the side of the fighting Don. Mironov was arrested by the Reds, sent to Moscow, where he was shot. But that will come later. In the meantime, there was great turmoil on the Don. If the Cossack population still hesitated, and only in some villages did the prudent voice of the old people gain the upper hand, then the non-Cossack population entirely sided with the Bolsheviks. The nonresident population in the Cossack regions always envied the Cossacks, who owned a large amount of land. Taking the side of the Bolsheviks, nonresidents hoped to take part in the division of the officers' and landowners' Cossack lands.

Other armed forces in the south were detachments of the emerging Volunteer Army, located in Rostov. On November 2, 1917, General Alekseev arrived on the Don, got in touch with Ataman Kaledin and asked him for permission to form volunteer detachments on the Don. General Alekseev’s goal was to take advantage of the southeastern base of the armed forces to gather the remaining steadfast officers, cadets, and old soldiers and organize them into the army necessary to restore order in Russia. Despite the complete lack of funds, Alekseev eagerly got down to business. On Barochnaya Street, the premises of one of the infirmaries were turned into an officers' dormitory, which became the cradle of volunteerism. Soon the first donation was received, 400 rubles. This is all that Russian society allocated to its defenders in November. But people simply walked to the Don, without any idea of ​​what awaited them, groping, in the darkness, across the solid Bolshevik sea. They went to where the centuries-old traditions of the Cossack freemen and the names of the leaders whom popular rumor associated with the Don served as a bright beacon. They came exhausted, hungry, ragged, but not discouraged. On December 6 (19), disguised as a peasant, with a false passport, General Kornilov arrived by rail in the Don. He wanted to go further to the Volga, and from there to Siberia. He considered it more correct for General Alekseev to remain in the south of Russia, and he would be given the opportunity to work in Siberia. He argued that in this case they would not interfere with each other and he would be able to organize a big business in Siberia. He was eager for space. But representatives of the “National Center” who arrived in Novocherkassk from Moscow insisted that Kornilov remain in the south of Russia and work together with Kaledin and Alekseev. An agreement was concluded between them, according to which General Alekseev took charge of all financial and political issues, General Kornilov took over the organization and command of the Volunteer Army, General Kaledin continued the formation of the Don Army and the management of the affairs of the Don Army. Kornilov had little faith in the success of work in the south of Russia, where he would have to create a white cause in the territories of the Cossack troops and depend on the military atamans. He said this: “I know Siberia, I believe in Siberia, things can be done there on a broad scale. Here Alekseev alone can easily handle the matter.” Kornilov was eager to go to Siberia with all his soul and heart, he wanted to be released and was not particularly interested in the work of forming the Volunteer Army. Kornilov’s fears that he would have friction and misunderstandings with Alekseev were justified from the first days of their work together. The forced stay of Kornilov in the south of Russia was a big political mistake of the “National Center”. But they believed that if Kornilov left, then many volunteers would follow him and the business started in Novocherkassk could fall apart. The formation of the Good Army progressed slowly, with an average of 75-80 volunteers signing up per day. There were few soldiers; mostly officers, cadets, students, cadets and high school students signed up. There were not enough weapons in the Don warehouses; they had to be taken away from soldiers traveling home on troop echelons passing through Rostov and Novocherkassk, or purchased through buyers in the same echelons. Lack of funds made work extremely difficult. The formation of the Don units progressed even worse. Generals Alekseev and Kornilov understood that the Cossacks did not want to go to restore order in Russia, but they were confident that the Cossacks would defend their lands. However, the situation in the Cossack regions of the southeast turned out to be much more difficult. The regiments returning from the front were completely neutral in the events taking place, and even showed a tendency towards Bolshevism, declaring that the Bolsheviks had not done anything bad to them.

In addition, inside the Cossack regions there was a difficult struggle against the non-resident population, and in the Kuban and Terek also against the highlanders. The military atamans had the opportunity to use well-trained teams of young Cossacks who were preparing to be sent to the front, and organize the conscription of successive ages of youth. General Kaledin could have had support in this from the elderly and front-line soldiers, who said: “We have served our duty, now we must call on others.” The formation of Cossack youth from conscription age could have given up to 2-3 divisions, which in those days was enough to maintain order on the Don, but this was not done. At the end of December, representatives of the British and French military missions arrived in Novocherkassk. They asked what had been done, what was planned to be done, after which they stated that they could help, but for now only with money, in the amount of 100 million rubles, in tranches of 10 million per month. The first payment was expected in January, but was never received, and then the situation completely changed. The initial funds for the formation of the Good Army consisted of donations, but they were scanty, mainly due to the unimaginable greed and stinginess of the Russian bourgeoisie and other propertied classes under the given circumstances. It should be said that the stinginess and stinginess of the Russian bourgeoisie is simply legendary. Back in 1909, during a discussion in the State Duma on the issue of the kulaks, P.A. Stolypin spoke prophetic words. He said: “... there is no more greedy and unscrupulous kulak and bourgeois than in Russia. It is no coincidence that in the Russian language the phrases “world-eater kulak and world-eater bourgeois” are used. If they do not change the type of their social behavior, great shocks await us...” He looked as if into water. They did not change social behavior. Almost all the organizers of the white movement point to the low usefulness of their appeals for material assistance to the property classes. However, by mid-January, a small (about 5 thousand people) but very combative and morally strong Volunteer Army had emerged. The Council of People's Commissars demanded the extradition or dispersal of volunteers. Kaledin and Krug answered: “There is no extradition from the Don!” The Bolsheviks, in order to eliminate the counter-revolutionaries, began to pull units loyal to them from the Western and Caucasian fronts to the Don region. They began to threaten the Don from Donbass, Voronezh, Torgovaya and Tikhoretskaya. In addition, the Bolsheviks tightened control on the railways and the influx of volunteers decreased sharply. At the end of January, the Bolsheviks occupied Bataysk and Taganrog, and on January 29, cavalry units moved from Donbass to Novocherkassk. The Don found himself defenseless against the Reds. Ataman Kaledin was confused, did not want bloodshed and decided to transfer his powers to the City Duma and democratic organizations, and then committed life with a shot in the heart. This was a sad but logical result of his activities. The First Don Circle gave pernach to the elected chieftain, but did not give him power.

The region was headed by a Military Government of 14 elders elected from each district. Their meetings had the character of a provincial duma and did not leave any trace in the history of the Don. On November 20, the government addressed the population with a very liberal declaration, convening a congress of the Cossack and peasant population on December 29 to organize the life of the Don region. At the beginning of January, a coalition government was created on a parity basis, 7 seats were given to the Cossacks, 7 to non-residents. The inclusion of demagogues-intellectuals and revolutionary democrats into the government finally led to the paralysis of power. Ataman Kaledin was ruined by his trust in the Don peasants and non-residents, his famous “parity”. He failed to glue the disparate pieces of the population of the Don region together. Under him, the Don split into two camps, Cossacks and Don peasants, along with non-resident workers and artisans. The latter, with few exceptions, were with the Bolsheviks. The Don peasantry, which made up 48% of the region's population, carried away by the broad promises of the Bolsheviks, was not satisfied with the measures of the Don government: the introduction of zemstvos in peasant districts, the attraction of peasants to participate in stanitsa self-government, their widespread admission into the Cossack class and the allocation of three million dessiatines of landowners' land. Under the influence of the incoming socialist element, the Don peasantry demanded a general division of all Cossack land. The numerically smallest working environment (10-11%) was concentrated in the most important centers, was the most restless and did not hide its sympathy for Soviet power. The revolutionary-democratic intelligentsia had not outlived its former psychology and, with amazing blindness, continued its destructive policy, which led to the death of democracy on a nationwide scale. The bloc of Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries reigned in all peasant and non-resident congresses, all kinds of dumas, councils, trade unions and inter-party meetings. There was not a single meeting where resolutions of no confidence in the ataman, the government and the Circle were not passed, or protests against their taking measures against anarchy, criminality and banditry.

They preached neutrality and reconciliation with that force that openly declared: “He who is not with us is against us.” In cities, workers' settlements and peasant settlements, the uprisings against the Cossacks did not subside. Attempts to place units of workers and peasants into Cossack regiments ended in disaster. They betrayed the Cossacks, went to the Bolsheviks and took Cossack officers with them to torture and death. The war took on the character of a class struggle. The Cossacks defended their Cossack rights from the Don workers and peasants. With the death of Ataman Kaledin and the occupation of Novocherkassk by the Bolsheviks, the period of the Great War and the transition to civil war ends in the south.

Rice. 2 Ataman Kaledin

On February 12, Bolshevik troops occupied Novocherkassk and military foreman Golubov, in “gratitude” for the fact that General Nazarov once saved him from prison, shot the new chieftain. Having lost all hope of holding Rostov, on the night of February 9 (22), the Good Army of 2,500 soldiers left the city for Aksai, and then moved to Kuban. After the establishment of Bolshevik power in Novocherkassk, terror began. Cossack units were prudently scattered throughout the city in small groups; domination in the city was in the hands of nonresidents and Bolsheviks. On suspicion of connections with the Good Army, officers were mercilessly executed. The robberies and robberies of the Bolsheviks made the Cossacks wary, even the Cossacks of the Golubovo regiments took a wait-and-see attitude. In the villages where nonresident and Don peasants seized power, the executive committees began dividing the Cossack lands. These outrages soon caused uprisings of the Cossacks in the villages adjacent to Novocherkassk. The leader of the Reds on the Don, Podtyolkov, and the head of the punitive detachment, Antonov, fled to Rostov, then were caught and executed. The occupation of Novocherkassk by the White Cossacks in April coincided with the occupation of Rostov by the Germans, and the return of the Volunteer Army to the Don region. But out of 252 villages of the Donskoy army, only 10 were liberated from the Bolsheviks. The Germans firmly occupied Rostov and Taganrog and the entire western part of the Donetsk district. The outposts of the Bavarian cavalry stood 12 versts from Novocherkassk. Under these conditions, Don was faced with four main tasks:
- immediately convene a new Circle, in which only delegates from the liberated villages could take part
- establish relations with the German authorities, find out their intentions and come to an agreement with them
- recreate the Don Army
- establish relationships with the Volunteer Army.

On April 28, a general meeting of the Don government and delegates from the villages and military units that took part in the expulsion of Soviet troops from the Don region took place. The composition of this Circle could not have any claim to resolving issues for the entire Army, which is why it limited its work to issues of organizing the struggle for the liberation of the Don. The meeting decided to declare itself the Don Rescue Circle. There were 130 people in it. Even on the democratic Don, this was the most popular assembly. The circle was called gray because there were no intelligentsia on it. At this time, the cowardly intelligentsia sat in cellars and basements, trembling for their lives or being mean to the commissars, signing up for service in the Soviets or trying to get a job in innocent institutions for education, food and finance. She had no time for elections in these troubled times, when both voters and deputies were risking their heads. The circle was elected without party struggle, there was no time for that. The circle was chosen and elected to it exclusively by Cossacks who passionately wanted to save their native Don and were ready to give their lives for this. And these were not empty words, because after the elections, having sent their delegates, the electors themselves dismantled their weapons and went to save the Don. This Circle did not have a political face and had one goal - to save the Don from the Bolsheviks, at any cost and at any cost. He was truly popular, meek, wise and businesslike. And this gray, from overcoat and coat cloth, that is, truly democratic, the Don saved the people's mind. Already by the time the full military circle was convened on August 15, 1918, the Don land was cleared of the Bolsheviks.

The second urgent task for the Don was to resolve relations with the Germans who occupied Ukraine and the western part of the lands of the Don Army. Ukraine also laid claim to the German-occupied Don lands: Donbass, Taganrog and Rostov. The attitude towards the Germans and towards Ukraine was the most pressing issue, and on April 29 the Circle decided to send a plenipotentiary embassy to the Germans in Kyiv in order to find out the reasons for their appearance on the territory of the Don. The negotiations took place in calm conditions. The Germans stated that they were not going to occupy the region and promised to clear the occupied villages, which they soon did. On the same day, the Circle decided to organize a real army, not from partisans, volunteers or vigilantes, but obeying laws and discipline. What Ataman Kaledin with his government and the Circle, consisting of talkative intellectuals, had been stomping around for almost a year, the gray Circle for saving the Don decided at two meetings. The Don Army was still only a project, and the command of the Volunteer Army already wanted to crush it under itself. But Krug answered clearly and specifically: “The supreme command of all military forces, without exception, operating on the territory of the Don Army must belong to the military ataman...”. This answer did not satisfy Denikin; he wanted to have large reinforcements of people and material in the person of the Don Cossacks, and not to have a “allied” army nearby. The circle worked intensively, meetings were held in the morning and evening. He was in a hurry to restore order and was not afraid of reproaches for his desire to return to the old regime. On May 1, the Circle decided: “Unlike the Bolshevik gangs, which do not wear any external insignia, all units participating in the defense of the Don must immediately take on their military appearance and wear shoulder straps and other insignia.” On May 3, as a result of a closed vote, Major General P.N. was elected military chieftain by 107 votes (13 against, 10 abstained). Krasnov. General Krasnov did not accept this election before the Circle adopted the laws that he considered necessary to introduce into the Donskoy army in order to be able to fulfill the tasks assigned to him by the Circle. Krasnov said at the Circle: “Creativity has never been the lot of the team. Raphael's Madonna was created by Raphael, and not by a committee of artists... You are the owners of the Don land, I am your manager. It's all about trust. If you trust me, you accept the laws I propose; if you do not accept them, it means that you do not trust me, you are afraid that I will use the power given to you to the detriment of the army. Then we have nothing to talk about. I cannot lead the army without your complete trust.” When asked by one of the members of the Circle whether he could suggest changing or altering anything in the laws proposed by the ataman, Krasnov replied: “You can. Articles 48,49,50. You can propose any flag except red, any coat of arms except the Jewish five-pointed star, any anthem except the international..." The very next day the Circle reviewed all the laws proposed by the ataman and adopted them. The circle restored the ancient pre-Petrine title “The Great Don Army”. The laws were an almost complete copy of the basic laws of the Russian Empire, with the difference that the rights and prerogatives of the emperor passed to... the ataman. And there was no time for sentimentality.

Before the eyes of the Don Rescue Circle stood the bloody ghosts of Ataman Kaledin, who had shot himself, and Ataman Nazarov, who had been shot. The Don lay in rubble, it was not only destroyed, but polluted by the Bolsheviks, and the German horses drank the water of the Quiet Don, a river sacred to the Cossacks. The work of the previous Circles led to this, with the decisions of which Kaledin and Nazarov fought, but could not win because they had no power. But these laws created many enemies for the chieftain. As soon as the Bolsheviks were expelled, the intelligentsia, hiding in cellars and basements, came out and started a liberal howl. These laws did not satisfy Denikin either, who saw in them a desire for independence. On May 5, the Circle dispersed, and the ataman was left alone to rule the army. That same evening, his adjutant Yesaul Kulgavov went to Kyiv with handwritten letters to Hetman Skoropadsky and Emperor Wilhelm. The result of the letter was that on May 8, a German delegation came to the ataman, with a statement that the Germans did not pursue any aggressive goals in relation to the Don and would leave Rostov and Taganrog as soon as they saw that complete order had been restored in the Don region. On May 9, Krasnov met with the Kuban ataman Filimonov and the Georgian delegation, and on May 15 in the village of Manychskaya with Alekseev and Denikin. The meeting revealed deep differences between the Don Ataman and the command of the Don Army in both tactics and strategy in the fight against the Bolsheviks. The goal of the rebel Cossacks was to liberate the land of the Don Army from the Bolsheviks. They had no further intentions of waging war outside their territory.

Rice. 3 Ataman Krasnov P.N.

By the time of the occupation of Novocherkassk and the election of the ataman by the Circle for the Salvation of the Don, all armed forces consisted of six infantry and two cavalry regiments of varying numbers. The junior officers were from the villages and were good, but there was a shortage of hundred and regimental commanders. Having experienced many insults and humiliations during the revolution, many senior commanders at first had distrust of the Cossack movement. The Cossacks were dressed in their semi-military dress, but boots were missing. Up to 30% were dressed in poles and bast shoes. Most wore shoulder straps, and everyone wore white stripes on their caps and hats to distinguish them from the Red Guard. The discipline was fraternal, the officers ate from the same pot with the Cossacks, because they were most often relatives. The headquarters were small; for economic purposes, the regiments had several public figures from the villages who resolved all logistical issues. The battle was fleeting. No trenches or fortifications were built. There were few entrenching tools, and natural laziness prevented the Cossacks from digging in. The tactics were simple. At dawn they began to attack in liquid chains. At this time, an outflanking column was moving along an intricate route towards the enemy’s flank and rear. If the enemy was ten times stronger, it was considered normal for an offensive. As soon as a bypass column appeared, the Reds began to retreat and then the Cossack cavalry rushed at them with a wild, soul-chilling whoop, knocked them over and took them prisoner. Sometimes the battle began with a feigned retreat of twenty versts (this is an old Cossack venter). The Reds rushed to pursue, and at this time the encircling columns closed behind them and the enemy found themselves in a fire pocket. With such tactics, Colonel Guselshchikov with regiments of 2-3 thousand people smashed and captured entire Red Guard divisions of 10-15 thousand people with convoys and artillery. Cossack custom required that officers go in front, so their losses were very high. For example, the division commander, General Mamantov, was wounded three times and still in chains. In the attack, the Cossacks were merciless, and they were also merciless towards the captured Red Guards. They were especially harsh towards captured Cossacks, who were considered traitors to the Don. Here the father used to sentence his son to death and did not want to say goodbye to him. It also happened the other way around. At this time, echelons of Red troops were still moving across the Don territory, fleeing to the east. But in June the railway line was cleared of the Reds, and in July, after the Bolsheviks were expelled from the Khopyorsky district, the entire territory of the Don was liberated from the Reds by the Cossacks themselves.

In other Cossack regions the situation was no easier than on the Don. The situation was especially difficult among the Caucasian tribes, where the Russian population was scattered. The North Caucasus was raging. The fall of the central government caused a shock more serious here than anywhere else. Reconciled by the tsarist power, but not having outlived the centuries-old strife and not having forgotten old grievances, the mixed-tribal population became agitated. The Russian element that united it, about 40% of the population consisted of two equal groups, Terek Cossacks and non-residents. But these groups were separated by social conditions, were settling their land scores and could not counter the Bolshevik threat with unity and strength. While Ataman Karaulov was alive, several Terek regiments and some ghost of power survived. On December 13, at the Prokhladnaya station, a crowd of Bolshevik soldiers, on the orders of the Vladikavkaz Soviet of Deputies, unhooked the ataman’s carriage, drove it to a distant dead end and opened fire on the carriage. Karaulov was killed. In fact, on the Terek, power passed to local councils and bands of soldiers of the Caucasian Front, who flowed in a continuous stream from the Transcaucasus and, not being able to penetrate further into their native places, due to the complete blockage of the Caucasian highways, settled like locusts across the Terek-Dagestan region. They terrorized the population, planted new councils or hired themselves into the service of existing ones, bringing fear, blood and destruction everywhere. This flow served as the most powerful conductor of Bolshevism, which swept the nonresident Russian population (due to the thirst for land), touched the Cossack intelligentsia (due to the thirst for power) and greatly confused the Terek Cossacks (due to the fear of “going against the people”). As for the mountaineers, they were extremely conservative in their way of life, which very little reflected social and land inequality. True to their customs and traditions, they were governed by their national councils and were alien to the ideas of Bolshevism. But the mountaineers quickly and willingly accepted the practical aspects of central anarchy and intensified violence and robbery. By disarming the passing troop trains, they had a lot of weapons and ammunition. On the basis of the Caucasian Native Corps, they formed national military formations.

After the death of Ataman Karaulov, an overwhelming struggle with the Bolshevik detachments that filled the region and the aggravation of controversial issues with neighbors - Kabardians, Chechens, Ossetians, Ingush - the Terek Army was turned into a republic, part of the RSFSR. Quantitatively, Terek Cossacks in the Terek region made up 20% of the population, nonresidents - 20%, Ossetians - 17%, Chechens - 16%, Kabardians - 12% and Ingush - 4%. The most active among other peoples were the smallest - the Ingush, who fielded a strong and well-armed detachment. They robbed everyone and kept Vladikavkaz in constant fear, which they captured and plundered in January. When Soviet power was established in Dagestan, as well as on the Terek, on March 9, 1918, the Council of People's Commissars set its first goal to break the Terek Cossacks, destroying their special advantages. Armed expeditions of mountaineers were sent to the villages, robberies, violence and murders were carried out, lands were taken away and handed over to the Ingush and Chechens. In this difficult situation, the Terek Cossacks lost heart. While the mountain peoples created their armed forces through improvisation, the natural Cossack army, which had 12 well-organized regiments, disintegrated, dispersed and disarmed at the request of the Bolsheviks. However, the excesses of the Reds led to the fact that on June 18, 1918, the uprising of the Terek Cossacks began under the leadership of Bicherakhov. The Cossacks defeat the Red troops and blockade their remnants in Grozny and Kizlyar. On July 20, in Mozdok, the Cossacks were convened for a congress, at which they decided on an armed uprising against Soviet power. The Terets established contact with the command of the Volunteer Army, the Terek Cossacks created a combat detachment of up to 12,000 people with 40 guns and resolutely took the path of fighting the Bolsheviks.

The Orenburg Army under the command of Ataman Dutov, the first to declare independence from the power of the Soviets, was the first to be invaded by detachments of workers and red soldiers, who began robbery and repression. Veteran of the fight against the Soviets, Orenburg Cossack General I.G. Akulinin recalled: “The stupid and cruel policy of the Bolsheviks, their undisguised hatred of the Cossacks, the desecration of Cossack shrines and, especially, bloody massacres, requisitions, indemnities and robbery in the villages - all this opened their eyes to the essence of Soviet power and forced them to take up arms. . The Bolsheviks could not lure the Cossacks with anything. The Cossacks had land, and they regained their freedom in the form of the broadest self-government in the first days of the February Revolution.” A turning point gradually occurred in the mood of the ordinary and front-line Cossacks; they increasingly began to speak out against the violence and tyranny of the new government. If in January 1918, Ataman Dutov, under pressure from Soviet troops, left Orenburg, and he had barely three hundred active fighters left, then on the night of April 4, sleeping Orenburg was raided by more than 1,000 Cossacks, and on July 3, power was restored in Orenburg passed into the hands of the ataman.

Fig.5 Ataman Dutov

In the area of ​​the Ural Cossacks, the resistance was more successful, despite the small number of the Troops. Uralsk was not occupied by the Bolsheviks. From the beginning of the birth of Bolshevism, the Ural Cossacks did not accept its ideology and back in March they easily dispersed the local Bolshevik revolutionary committees. The main reasons were that among the Urals there were no non-residents, there was a lot of land, and the Cossacks were Old Believers who more strictly guarded their religious and moral principles. The Cossack regions of Asian Russia generally occupied a special position. All of them were small in composition, most of them were historically formed in special conditions by state measures, for the purposes of state necessity, and their historical existence was determined by insignificant periods. Despite the fact that these troops did not have firmly established Cossack traditions, foundations and skills for forms of statehood, they all turned out to be hostile to the approaching Bolshevism. In mid-April 1918, the troops of Ataman Semyonov, about 1000 bayonets and sabers, went on the offensive from Manchuria to Transbaikalia, against 5.5 thousand for the Reds. At the same time, the uprising of the Transbaikal Cossacks began. By May, Semenov’s troops approached Chita, but were unable to take it immediately. The battles between Semyonov’s Cossacks and the red detachments, consisting mainly of former political prisoners and captured Hungarians, in Transbaikalia took place with varying degrees of success. However, at the end of July, the Cossacks defeated the Red troops and took Chita on August 28. Soon the Amur Cossacks drove the Bolsheviks out of their capital Blagoveshchensk, and the Ussuri Cossacks took Khabarovsk. Thus, under the command of their atamans: Transbaikal - Semenov, Ussuri - Kalmykov, Semirechensky - Annenkov, Ural - Tolstov, Siberian - Ivanov, Orenburg - Dutov, Astrakhan - Prince Tundutov, they entered into a decisive battle. In the fight against the Bolsheviks, the Cossack regions fought exclusively for their lands and law and order, and their actions, according to historians, were in the nature of a guerrilla war.

A huge role along the entire length of the Siberian railway was played by the troops of the Czechoslovak legions, formed by the Russian government from Czech and Slovak prisoners of war, numbering up to 45,000 people. By the beginning of the revolution, the Czech corps stood in the rear of the Southwestern Front in Ukraine. In the eyes of the Austro-Germans, legionnaires, like former prisoners of war, were traitors. When the Germans attacked Ukraine in March 1918, the Czechs offered strong resistance to them, but most Czechs did not see their place in Soviet Russia and wanted to return to the European front. According to the agreement with the Bolsheviks, Czech trains were sent towards Siberia to board ships in Vladivostok and send them to Europe. In addition to the Czechoslovaks, there were many captured Hungarians in Russia, who mostly sympathized with the Reds. The Czechoslovakians had a centuries-old and fierce hostility and enmity with the Hungarians (how can one not recall the immortal works of J. Hasek in this regard). Due to fear of attacks on the way by the Hungarian Red units, the Czechs resolutely refused to obey the Bolshevik order to surrender all weapons, which is why it was decided to disperse the Czech legions. They were divided into four groups with a distance between groups of echelons of 1000 kilometers, so that the echelons with Czechs stretched throughout Siberia from the Volga to Transbaikalia. The Czech legions played a colossal role in the Russian civil war, since after their rebellion the fight against the Soviets sharply intensified.

Despite the agreements, there were considerable misunderstandings in the relations between the Czechs, Hungarians and local revolutionary committees. As a result, on May 25, 1918, 4.5 thousand Czechs rebelled in Mariinsk, and on May 26, the Hungarians provoked an uprising of 8.8 thousand Czechs in Chelyabinsk. Then, with the support of Czechoslovak troops, the Bolshevik government was overthrown on May 26 in Novonikolaevsk, May 29 in Penza, May 30 in Syzran, May 31 in Tomsk and Kurgan, June 7 in Omsk, June 8 in Samara and June 18 in Krasnoyarsk. The formation of Russian combat units began in the liberated areas. On July 5, Russian and Czechoslovak troops occupy Ufa, and on July 25 they take Yekaterinburg. At the end of 1918, the Czechoslovak legionnaires themselves began a gradual retreat to the Far East. But, having participated in battles in Kolchak’s army, they would finally finish their retreat and leave Vladivostok for France only at the beginning of 1920. In such conditions, the Russian White movement began in the Volga region and Siberia, not counting the independent actions of the Ural and Orenburg Cossack troops, which began the fight against the Bolsheviks immediately after they came to power. On June 8, the Committee of the Constituent Assembly (Komuch) was created in Samara, liberated from the Reds. He declared himself a temporary revolutionary government, which was supposed to spread over the entire territory of Russia and transfer control of the country to a legally elected Constituent Assembly. The rising population of the Volga region began a successful struggle against the Bolsheviks, but in the liberated places control ended up in the hands of the fleeing fragments of the Provisional Government. These heirs and participants in destructive activities, having formed a government, carried out the same destructive work. At the same time, Komuch created his own armed forces - the People's Army. On June 9, Lieutenant Colonel Kappel began commanding a detachment of 350 people in Samara. In mid-June, the replenished detachment took Syzran, Stavropol Volzhsky (now Togliatti), and also inflicted a heavy defeat on the Reds near Melekes. On July 21, Kappel takes Simbirsk, defeating the superior forces of the Soviet commander Guy defending the city. As a result, by the beginning of August 1918, the territory of the Constituent Assembly extended from west to east for 750 versts from Syzran to Zlatoust, from north to south for 500 versts from Simbirsk to Volsk. On August 7, Kappel’s troops, having previously defeated the red river flotilla that came out to meet them at the mouth of the Kama, take Kazan. There they seize part of the gold reserves of the Russian Empire (650 million gold rubles in coins, 100 million rubles in credit notes, gold bars, platinum and other valuables), as well as huge warehouses with weapons, ammunition, medicines, and ammunition. This gave the Samara government a solid financial and material base. With the capture of Kazan, the Academy of the General Staff, located in the city, headed by General A.I. Andogsky, moved into the anti-Bolshevik camp in its entirety.

A government of industrialists was formed in Yekaterinburg, a Siberian government was formed in Omsk, and the government of Ataman Semyonov, who led the Transbaikal Army, was formed in Chita. The Allies dominated in Vladivostok. Then General Horvath arrived from Harbin, and as many as three authorities were formed: from the proteges of the Allies, General Horvath and from the railway board. Such fragmentation of the anti-Bolshevik front in the east required unification, and a meeting was convened in Ufa to select a single authoritative state power. The situation in the units of the anti-Bolshevik forces was unfavorable. The Czechs did not want to fight in Russia and demanded that they be sent to the European fronts against the Germans. There was no trust in the Siberian government and members of the Komuch among the troops and the people. In addition, the representative of England, General Knox, stated that until a firm government was created, the delivery of supplies from the British would be stopped. Under these conditions, Admiral Kolchak joined the government and in the fall he carried out a coup and was proclaimed head of government and supreme commander with the transfer of full power to him.

In the south of Russia events developed as follows. After the Reds occupied Novocherkassk in early 1918, the Volunteer Army retreated to Kuban. During the campaign to Ekaterinodar, the army, having endured all the difficulties of the winter campaign, later nicknamed the “ice campaign,” fought continuously. After the death of General Kornilov, who was killed near Yekaterinodar on March 31 (April 13), the army again made its way with a large number of prisoners to the territory of the Don, where by that time the Cossacks, who had rebelled against the Bolsheviks, had begun to clear their territory. Only by May the army found itself in conditions that allowed it to rest and replenish itself for the further fight against the Bolsheviks. Although the attitude of the Volunteer Army command towards the German army was irreconcilable, it, having no weapons, tearfully begged Ataman Krasnov to send the Volunteer Army weapons, shells and cartridges that it received from the German army. Ataman Krasnov, in his colorful expression, receiving military equipment from the hostile Germans, washed them in the clean waters of the Don and transferred part of the Volunteer Army. Kuban was still occupied by the Bolsheviks. In Kuban, the break with the center, which occurred on the Don due to the collapse of the Provisional Government, occurred earlier and more acutely. Back on October 5, with a strong protest from the Provisional Government, the regional Cossack Rada adopted a resolution on separating the region into an independent Kuban Republic. At the same time, the right to elect members of the self-government body was granted only to the Cossack, mountain population and old-time peasants, that is, almost half of the region’s population was deprived of voting rights. A military ataman, Colonel Filimonov, was placed at the head of the socialist government. The discord between the Cossack and nonresident populations took on increasingly acute forms. Not only the nonresident population, but also the front-line Cossacks stood up against the Rada and the government. Bolshevism came to this mass. The Kuban units returning from the front did not go to war against the government, did not want to fight the Bolsheviks and did not follow the orders of their elected authorities. An attempt, following the example of Don, to create a government based on “parity” ended in the same way, paralysis of power. Everywhere, in every village and village, the Red Guard from outside the city gathered, and they were joined by a part of the Cossack front-line soldiers, who were poorly subordinate to the center, but followed exactly its policy. These undisciplined, but well-armed and violent gangs began to impose Soviet power, redistribute land, confiscate grain surpluses and socialize, and simply rob wealthy Cossacks and behead the Cossacks - persecute officers, non-Bolshevik intelligentsia, priests, and authoritative old men. And above all, to disarmament. It is worthy of surprise with what complete non-resistance the Cossack villages, regiments and batteries gave up their rifles, machine guns, and guns. When the villages of the Yeisk department rebelled at the end of April, it was a completely unarmed militia. The Cossacks had no more than 10 rifles per hundred; the rest were armed with what they could. Some attached daggers or scythes to long sticks, others took pitchforks, others took spears, and others simply shovels and axes. Punitive detachments with... Cossack weapons came out against defenseless villages. By the beginning of April, all non-resident villages and 85 out of 87 villages were Bolshevik. But the Bolshevism of the villages was purely external. Often only the names changed: the ataman became a commissar, the village assembly became a council, the village board became an iskom.

Where executive committees were captured by non-residents, their decisions were sabotaged, re-elected every week. There was a stubborn, but passive, without inspiration or enthusiasm, struggle between the age-old way of Cossack democracy and life with the new government. There was a desire to preserve Cossack democracy, but there was no courage. All this, in addition, was heavily implicated in the pro-Ukrainian separatism of some Cossacks who had Dnieper roots. The pro-Ukrainian figure Luka Bych, who headed the Rada, declared: “Helping the Volunteer Army means preparing for the reabsorption of Kuban by Russia.” Under these conditions, Ataman Shkuro gathered the first partisan detachment, located in the Stavropol region, where the Council was meeting, intensified the struggle and presented the Council with an ultimatum. The uprising of the Kuban Cossacks quickly gained strength. In June, the 8,000-strong Volunteer Army began its second campaign against Kuban, which had completely rebelled against the Bolsheviks. This time White was lucky. General Denikin successively defeated Kalnin’s 30,000-strong army near Belaya Glina and Tikhoretskaya, then in a fierce battle near Yekaterinodar, Sorokin’s 30,000-strong army. On July 21, the Whites occupied Stavropol, and on August 17, Ekaterinodar. Blocked on the Taman Peninsula, a 30,000-strong group of Reds under the command of Kovtyukh, the so-called “Taman Army,” along the Black Sea coast fought its way across the Kuban River, where the remnants of the defeated armies of Kalnin and Sorokin fled. By the end of August, the territory of the Kuban army is completely cleared of the Bolsheviks, and the strength of the White Army reaches 40 thousand bayonets and sabers. However, having entered the territory of Kuban, Denikin issued a decree addressed to the Kuban ataman and the government, demanding:
- full tension on the part of Kuban for its speedy liberation from the Bolsheviks
- all priority units of the Kuban military forces should henceforth be part of the Volunteer Army to carry out national tasks
- in the future, no separatism should be shown on the part of the liberated Kuban Cossacks.

Such gross interference by the command of the Volunteer Army in the internal affairs of the Kuban Cossacks had a negative impact. General Denikin led an army that had no defined territory, no people under his control, and, even worse, no political ideology. The commander of the Don Army, General Denisov, even called the volunteers “wandering musicians” in his hearts. General Denikin's ideas were oriented towards armed struggle. Not having sufficient means for this, General Denikin demanded the subordination of the Cossack regions of the Don and Kuban to him in order to fight. Don was in better conditions and was not at all bound by Denikin's instructions. The German army was perceived on the Don as a real force that contributed to getting rid of Bolshevik domination and terror. The Don government entered into contact with the German command and established fruitful cooperation. Relations with the Germans resulted in a purely business form. The rate of the German mark was set at 75 kopecks of the Don currency, a price was made for a Russian rifle with 30 rounds of one pound of wheat or rye, and other supply agreements were concluded. From the German army through Kiev in the first month and a half the Don Army received: 11,651 rifles, 88 machine guns, 46 guns, 109 thousand artillery shells, 11.5 million rifle cartridges, of which 35 thousand artillery shells and about 3 million rifle cartridges. At the same time, all the shame of peaceful relations with an irreconcilable enemy fell solely on Ataman Krasnov. As for the Supreme Command, according to the laws of the Don Army, it could only belong to the Military Ataman, and before his election - to the marching Ataman. This discrepancy led to the Don demanding the return of all the Don people from the Dorovol army. The relationship between the Don and the Good Army became not an alliance, but a relationship of fellow travelers.

In addition to tactics, there were also great differences within the white movement in strategy, policy and war goals. The goal of the Cossack masses was to liberate their land from the Bolshevik invasion, establish order in their region and provide the Russian people with the opportunity to arrange their destiny according to their own wishes. Meanwhile, the forms of civil war and the organization of the armed forces returned the art of war to the era of the 19th century. The successes of the troops then depended solely on the qualities of the commander who directly controlled the troops. Good commanders of the 19th century did not scatter the main forces, but directed them towards one main goal: the capture of the enemy’s political center. With the capture of the center, the government of the country is paralyzed and the conduct of the war becomes more complicated. The Council of People's Commissars, sitting in Moscow, was in extremely difficult conditions, reminiscent of the situation in Muscovite Rus' in the 14th-15th centuries, limited by the Oka and Volga rivers. Moscow was cut off from all types of supplies, and the goals of the Soviet rulers were reduced to obtaining basic food supplies and a piece of daily bread. In the pathetic calls of the leaders there were no longer any high motives emanating from the ideas of Marx; they sounded cynical, figurative and simple, as they once sounded in the speeches of the people's leader Pugachev: “Go, take everything and destroy everyone who stands in your way.” . People's Commissar of Military and Marine Bronstein (Trotsky), in his speech on June 9, 1918, indicated simple and clear goals: “Comrades! Among all the questions that trouble our hearts, there is one simple question - the question of our daily bread. All our thoughts, all our ideals are now dominated by one concern, one anxiety: how to survive tomorrow. Everyone involuntarily thinks about himself, about his family... My task is not at all to conduct only one campaign among you. We need to have a serious conversation about the country's food situation. According to our statistics, in 17, there was a surplus of grain in those places that produce and export grain, there were 882,000,000 poods. On the other hand, there are areas in the country where there is not enough of their own bread. If you calculate, it turns out that they are missing 322,000,000 poods. Therefore, in one part of the country there is a surplus of 882,000,000 pounds, and in the other, 322,000,000 pounds are not enough...

In the North Caucasus alone there is now a grain surplus of no less than 140,000,000 poods; in order to satisfy hunger, we need 15,000,000 poods per month for the whole country. Just think: 140,000,000 poods of surplus located only in the North Caucasus may be enough for ten months for the entire country. ...Let each of you now promise to provide immediate practical assistance so that we can organize a campaign for bread.” In fact, it was a direct call for robbery. Thanks to the complete absence of glasnost, the paralysis of public life and the complete fragmentation of the country, the Bolsheviks promoted people to leadership positions for whom, under normal conditions, there was only one place - prison. In such conditions, the task of the white command in the fight against the Bolsheviks should have had the shortest goal of capturing Moscow, without being distracted by any other secondary tasks. And to accomplish this main task it was necessary to attract the broadest sections of the people, primarily peasants. In reality, it was the other way around. The volunteer army, instead of marching on Moscow, was firmly stuck in the North Caucasus; the white Ural-Siberian troops could not cross the Volga. All revolutionary changes beneficial to the peasants and people, economic and political, were not recognized by the whites. The first step of their civilian representatives in the liberated territory was a decree that canceled all orders issued by the Provisional Government and the Council of People's Commissars, including those relating to property relations. General Denikin, having absolutely no plan for establishing a new order capable of satisfying the population, consciously or unconsciously, wanted to return Rus' to its original pre-revolutionary position, and the peasants were obliged to pay for the seized lands to their former owners. After this, could the whites count on the peasants supporting their activities? Of course not. The Cossacks refused to go beyond the Donskoy army. And they were right. Voronezh, Saratov and other peasants not only did not fight the Bolsheviks, but also went against the Cossacks. The Cossacks, not without difficulty, were able to cope with their Don peasants and non-residents, but they could not defeat the entire peasantry of central Russia and they understood this perfectly well.

As Russian and non-Russian history shows us, when fundamental changes and decisions are required, we need not just people, but extraordinary individuals, who, unfortunately, were not there during the Russian timelessness. The country needed a government capable of not only issuing decrees, but also having the intelligence and authority to ensure that these decrees were carried out by the people, preferably voluntarily. Such power does not depend on state forms, but is based, as a rule, solely on the abilities and authority of the leader. Bonaparte, having established power, did not look for any forms, but managed to force him to obey his will. He forced both representatives of the royal nobility and people from the sans-culottes to serve France. There were no such consolidating personalities in the white and red movements, and this led to an incredible split and bitterness in the ensuing civil war. But that's a completely different story.

Materials used:
Gordeev A.A. - History of the Cossacks
Mamonov V.F. and others - History of the Cossacks of the Urals. Orenburg-Chelyabinsk 1992
Shibanov N.S. – Orenburg Cossacks of the 20th century
Ryzhkova N.V. - Don Cossacks in the wars of the early twentieth century - 2008
Brusilov A.A. My memories. Voenizdat. M.1983
Krasnov P.N. The Great Don Army. "Patriot" M.1990
Lukomsky A.S. The birth of the Volunteer Army.M.1926
Denikin A.I. How the fight against the Bolsheviks began in the south of Russia. M. 1926