#wrangel

White soldiers on board one of the ships leaving the Crimea.

November 14 1920, Sevastopol--The Soviets had launched what they hoped to be their final offensive against Wrangel in late October.  Although they destroyed much of his army, enough of it was able to fall back to the narrow isthmus connecting Crimea to the mainland to mount a concerted defense.  This, however, was overcome by direct and amphibious attacks between November 7 and 11, and it became quickly apparent that Crimea would soon be lost.

Wrangel had been preparing for such a possibility since his arrival in the spring, however, and he was much better equipped than Denikin had been when evacuating the Kuban in March.  Wrangel left Sevastopol on the 14th, and simultaneous evacuations took place at at least four other Crimean ports. 146,000 White soldiers and refugees were taken across the Black Sea to Constantinople by the end of the evacuation efforts on the 16th, aided by a one-day pause by regrouping Soviets.

Those who did not or could not evacuate, however, met a grimmer end.  Béla Kun was put in charge of Soviet administration in the area.  The Cheka killed tens of thousands in the coming weeks.  In Kerch, “trips to the Kuban” were organized: prisoners were taken out into the Sea of Azov and pushed overboard to drown.

Those who evacuated were interned and then lived in exile.  Wrangel took with him the last of the Blask Sea Fleet, including the dreadnought General Alexeyev, were interned in French Tunisia until the French recognized the Soviet Union in 1924.

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We do not ask for forgiveness from Nicholas the Bloody!

By Oksana Snegir

On the 17th of July, 99 years have passed since the execution of the death sentence of the Ural Regional Soviet against Nicholas the Bloody-Romanov and his family.

The most inveterate obscurantists from the bourgeois intelligentsia, the “Orthodox monarchists,” together with the priests, again raised their penitent hysteria. They again called upon us to sprinkle ashes on our heads…

Soviet forces with a British tank they captured from the Whites in fighting around the Kakhovka bridgehead in October 1920.

August 8 1920, Yeysk--After his June offensive out of Crimea, Wrangel had largely consolidated a significant area in southern Ukraine, stretching along the Dnepr from its mouth to Alexandrovsk [Zaporizhia] where it turned north, then southeast to Mariupol on the Sea of Azov.  Wrangel hoped to expand his territory and increase his numbers by linking up with Cossacks and other White partisans in the Kuban, the area that had been the power base of the Volunteer Army under Denikin.  Starting on August 8, Wrangel began landings of 4500 men on the Kuban coast, hoping they would link up with the partisans and retake Ekaterinodar [Krasnodar].  They failed at this task, however, and within three weeks the Whites had left the Kuban once again.

In the meantime, Wrangel faced a direct Soviet threat from across the Dnepr; despite the war in Poland, Lenin had made Wrangel’s elimination a priority (to Stalin’s chagrin, as we saw earlier today).  On August 7, the Soviets established several bridgeheads across the Dnepr, assisted by artillery from the elevated northern bank.  Wrangel’s forces destroyed most of these, but not the one at Kakhova, where various Latvian units were able to hold out and reinforce their position.  A Soviet breakout from this bridgehead would severely threaten Wrangel’s position in the area.  Both sides entrenched, and the next three month’s fighting in the area came the closest to resembling the trench warfare of World War I than any other part of the Russian Civil War.

October 6 1920, Kakhovka--Since breaking out of Crimea in early June, Wrangel’s front had largely stabilized, covered by the Dnepr in the north (excepting a Soviet bridgehead established around Kakhovka in August).  Attempts to land in the Kuban and reconnect with Denikin’s old power base among the Cossacks there had failed.  On October 6, Wrangel tried one final offensive, pushing north across the Dnepr.  There was, at least initially, some hope that the offensive would encourage the Poles to move into Ukraine as they had earlier in the year.  However, the Poles had learned their lesson in the spring and were already negotiating an armistice with the Soviets.

The Soviets, although they were desperately trying to prevent the Poles from taking territory before a possible armistice, had already begun moving troops south to face Wrangel.  However, they were slow in coming--Budyonny’s Konarmia had been wrecked by months of fighting, culminating in their near-destruction at Komarów, and it would take them nearly a month to move south.  They still managed to find time to conduct pogroms on the way, however.

As a result, Wrangel’s forces were able to cross the Dnepr and make limited progress.  However, even without the incoming reinforcements, the Soviets still outnumbered the Whites, and Wrangel’s troops had to withdraw back across the river within a week.  It would be the last major White offensive in the civil war.