#denikin

March 27 1920, Novorossiysk--The Volunteer Army, which at one point had threatened Moscow, now just hoped to escape capture by the Reds after their Don line broke in early March.  The major port available to them was Novorossiysk, two years earlier the last refuge of the Russian Black Sea Fleet from the Germans.  British, French, and American ships helped evacuate as many as possible, taking over 34,000 men of the Volunteer Army to the last stronghold of the Whites in the area, in Crimea.  In the earlier days of the evacuation, they even moved 22,000 Red PoWs.  

The evacuation was not even close to complete, however, when Red forces approached the town and brought an end to it on March 27; over 80,000 troops and over 100,000 refugees were left behind.  22,000 men were captured when the Reds entered Novorossiysk; some were able to escape to Tuapse instead, further down the coast, and some were evacuated before the Reds reached the town on April 8.  The rest of the Volunteer Army left behind would surrender in Sochi at the end of April.

The defeats and the botched evacuation forced Denikin out of the command of the remaining White forces in Crimea; on April 1, he stepped down and was replaced by Wrangel.

January 7 1920, Rostov--Denikin’s Volunteer Army had been in full retreat since the Reds took Kastornoye in mid-November, threatening to outflank them.  Pursued by the a new Red cavalry force under Budyonny, they were forced back quickly, Kiev falling to the Reds (once again) on December 16, and Tsaritsyn on January 3.  Denikin wanted to make a stand north of the Don around Rostov, but his troops would have none of it, crossing the frozen river as the Reds entered the city on January 7.  Only an unexpected thaw in the river stopped the Red pursuit.

The White situation in Siberia was even worse.  A month after the fall of Omsk, the Reds would take Novonikolayevsk [Novosibirsk] on the Ob, 450 miles to the east.  The final collapse came in the rear, however.  On January 4, an SR-backed uprising seized Krasnoyarsk, cutting off White forces to the west.  The Reds arrived in the city on January 7, capturing 60,000 troops; those that escaped were force to proceed east towards Lake Baikal by sled in the middle of winter.  Simultaneously, SRs and Mensheviks took control of Irkutsk, leaving Kolchak and his gold train trapped in between, on a section of the railway controlled by the Czechoslovaks, whose main priority at this point was exiting Russia alive.

March 17 1920, Ekaterinodar [Krasnodar]--After retreating behind the Don in early January, Denikin’s forces had stabilized there for a time.  In February, they had even launched a counterattack, retaking Rostov on February 20.  However, it came too late; the Red cavalry had already launched an attack along the railway from Tsaritsyn [Volgograd] to Ekaterinodar six days earlier, which threatened to outflank the White position on the Don.  Denikin sent his own cavalry to try to counter the threat, but bitter winter temperatures of -15 °F (-22 °C) killed many horses and men, and what arrived was quickly dispatched by the Reds.  Denikin’s forces fell back, hoping to make another stand on the Kuban River.

White forces entering Kiev in late August 1919.

August 23 1919, Odessa--Although Denikin had, in his “Moscow Directive,” attempted to limit his forces’ advance to the East of the Dnepr, they were still drawn across it anyway.  On August 23, the White forces, supported by what remained of the Black Sea Fleet, landed and took Odessa (which had been in Red hands less than five months and had already alienated its population to the point of revolt).  Around the same time, the whites took Kiev as well.  These came despite orders from the Politburo to Trotsky to hold them “to the last drop of blood” as “the fate of the entire revolution is in question.”  Ultimately, Red forces west of the Dnepr, now penned between the Whites and the threat of a Romanian advance (now that Hungary was out of the way), did their best to extricate themselves from the Ukraine.  The operations spread the White front considerably further west than anticipated, but White forces in the Ukraine still numbered no more than 10-15,000 men.  The bulk of Denikin’s forces were further east, closer to the Volga, attempting to fight off a Red counteroffensive which had already gained around 100 miles, though on narrow fronts.

October 14 1919, Orel--Denikin’s offensive towards Moscow reached its apex on October 14 by taking the city of Orel.  Although still 240 miles from Moscow, the loss of the city caused a fair amount of panic among Red leadership, who quickly ordered the highest priority be given to the defense of the approaches to Moscow, especially Tula and its armories.  Yudenich’s offensive against Petrograd also caused severe worries; Trotsky would write that Lenin thought the city was lost, though Kamenev disputes this.  Regardless, reserves had to be divided between the defense of both Moscow and Petrograd.

Unfortunately for the Whites, however, their efforts on other fronts were not going as well as they were for Denikin and Yudenich.  The Allies had pulled out of northern Russia entirely, their last forces leaving Murmansk on October 12.  While the Whites remained in control there, they no longer posed any threat to Petrograd from the north, having long since pulled back from Lake Onega.  The Finns adamantly refused to help Yudenich or the Whites in Northern Russia, and the Poles and Lithuanians were preoccupied with each other.  In Siberia, Kolchak’s forces had long since lost all their gains from the spring, and an offensive toward the Tobol in September gained some ground but failed to make any dent in the Reds’ numerical superiority.  Denikin’s capture of Orel and Yudenich’s march on Petrograd were to prove the high water mark of the White offensives in 1919.