The role of the Cossacks in the civil war. Cossacks in the 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 are a mystery to many historians. After all, the Cossacks in everyday life were the same farmers as 75% of the Russian population, they carried 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 inside 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 in 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 "lashers" and "royal satraps and guardsmen." Therefore, in the rebellion that arose in the capital of Russia, the Cossacks were inert and left the government to decide the issue of restoring order by the forces of other troops. After the abdication of the sovereign and the entry into the government of the country of the Provisional Government, the Cossacks considered the succession of power legitimate and were ready to support the new government. But this attitude gradually 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 destructive power, and the instructions of the Council of Cossack troops, which acted 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 get drunk on revolutionary freedoms and, having made some local changes, continued to live in the old way, without producing any economic, much less social upheavals. At the front in the military units, the order for the army, which completely changed the basis of the military order, was accepted by the Cossacks with bewilderment and continued to maintain order and discipline in the units under the new conditions, most often electing their former commanders and chiefs. There were no refusals to execute orders, and there was also no settling of personal scores with the command staff. But the tension gradually increased. The population of the Cossack regions and the Cossack units at the front were subjected to active revolutionary propaganda, which involuntarily had to be reflected in their psychology and forced them to carefully listen to the calls and demands of the revolutionary leaders. In the field of the Don army, one of the important revolutionary acts was the removal of the chief ataman Count Grabbe, replacing him with the elected ataman of Cossack origin, General Kaledin, and restoring the convocation of public representatives to the Military Circle, according to the custom that existed from antiquity, until the reign of Emperor Peter I. After which their life continued to walk without much disturbance. The question of relations with the non-Cossack population arose, which, psychologically, followed the same revolutionary paths as the population of the rest of Russia. 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 changed, and it was promised that the Cossacks would be freed from the oppression 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 set about fulfilling their promises. In November 1917, the Council of People's Commissars invited all the warring countries to start peace negotiations, but the Entente countries refused. Then Ulyanov sent a delegation to German-occupied Brest-Litovsk for separate peace talks 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 Brest Peace” 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 hands of the Germans were untied to continue the war in the west. In early March, the German army began to advance along the entire front to occupy the territories given by the Bolsheviks under a 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. The diplomatic defeat of Russia in Brest-Litovsk was caused not only by the venality, 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, for all the precariousness of its position, behind the back of a 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 with the slogan "we stop the war, but do not sign peace" broke off the negotiations. 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 terms of the peace. In view of the complete inability of the Sovietized old army and the rudiments of the Red Army to withstand even a limited advance of the 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 Petlyura "from the throne", placing the puppet hetman Skoropadsky on him. Thus, shortly before sinking into oblivion, the Second Reich under the leadership of Kaiser Wilhelm II captured Ukraine and Crimea.

After the conclusion of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk by the Bolsheviks, 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 liquidated the Soviets there. The allies vigilantly followed what was happening in Russia and also tried to ensure their interests, linking them with the former Russia. In addition, there were up to two million prisoners of war in Russia who, with the consent of the Bolsheviks, could be sent to their countries, and it was important for the Entente powers to prevent the return of prisoners of war to Germany and Austria-Hungary. For communication between Russia and the allies, ports served, in the north Murmansk and Arkhangelsk, in the Far East Vladivostok. In these ports were concentrated large warehouses of property and military equipment delivered by order of the Russian government by foreigners. The accumulated cargo was over a million tons worth up to 2 and a half billion rubles. Cargo was shamelessly plundered, including by local revolutionary committees. To ensure the safety of cargo, these ports were gradually occupied by the Allies. Since the orders imported from England, France and Italy were sent through the northern ports, they were occupied by parts of the British in 12,000 and the Allies in 11,000 people. Import 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 57,000 Japanese units and 13,000 other allied units. But they did not overthrow the Bolshevik government. Only on July 29, the power of the Bolsheviks in Vladivostok was overthrown by the White Czechs under the leadership of the Russian general M.K. Diterikhs.

In domestic policy, 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, in which the Bolsheviks blamed the bourgeoisie and the "rotten intellectuals", and these classes were subjected to the most severe terror, bordering on destruction. It is still impossible to fully understand how this all-destroying force came to power in Russia, given that power was seized in a country with a thousand-year history and culture. After all, by the same measures, the international destructive forces hoped to produce an internal explosion in a troubled France, transferring up to 10 million francs to French banks for this purpose. But France, by the beginning of the 20th century, had already exhausted its limit on revolutions and was tired of them. Unfortunately for the businessmen of the revolution, forces were found 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 in more detail in the Military Review in the article "How America Saved Western Europe from the Ghost of World Revolution."

One of the main reasons that allowed the Bolsheviks to carry out a coup d'état, 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, who 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 Kerensky period, to the side of the Bolsheviks, which ensured their victory. In most regions of the country, Bolshevik power was established quickly and peacefully: out of 84 provincial and other large cities, Soviet power was established as a result of armed struggle in only fifteen. Having adopted the "Decree on Peace" on the second day of their stay in power, the Bolsheviks ensured the "triumphant procession of Soviet power" in Russia from October 1917 to February 1918.

Relations between the Cossacks and the rulers of the Bolsheviks were determined by decrees of the Union of Cossack troops and the Soviet government. On November 22, 1917, the Union of Cossack Troops submitted a resolution informing 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, being guided by the democratic principles of self-determination of nationalities, it will not tolerate any other power in its territories than that of the people, formed by the free agreement of local nationalities without any external and extraneous influence.
- Sending punitive detachments against the Cossack regions, in particular against the Don, will bring civil war to the outskirts, where vigorous work is underway to establish public order. This will cause a breakdown 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 business, leading to the disorder of the granary 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 hostilities 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 the combined detachments to the south to the starting points: Gomel, Bryansk, Kharkov, Voronezh.
- Move the most active units from the Zhmerinka region to the east to occupy the Donbass.

This decree created the germ of a fratricidal civil war of Soviet power against the Cossack regions. For the existence of the Bolsheviks, Caucasian oil, Donetsk coal and bread from the southern outskirts were urgently needed. The outbreak of mass famine pushed Soviet Russia towards the rich south. There were no well-organized and sufficient forces at the disposal of the Don and Kuban governments 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 front-line Cossacks entered into an open struggle with the old. In many villages, this struggle became fierce, the reprisals on both sides were cruel. But there were many Cossacks who came from the front, they were well-armed and loud-mouthed, they had combat experience, and in most villages the victory went to the front-line youth, heavily infected with Bolshevism. It soon became clear that in the Cossack regions, strong units can only be created 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 (among the Cossacks they are called partisan) units, but this business 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 the purpose of making money. However, the main threat to the Cossack regions was the regiments returning from the front, as 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 the 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 Donvoenrevkom, 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 foremen Golubov and Mironov, turned out to be supporters of Bolshevik ideas, and the closest employee of Golubov was the cadet Podtelkov. In January 1918, the 32nd Don Cossack Regiment returned to the Don from the Romanian Front. Having elected the military foreman F.K. 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 propagandized by him, dispersed the meeting of the Military Circle, arrested General Nazarov, who had assumed the post of ataman of the Army 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 hanged by their verdict. The fate of Mironov was also tragic. He managed to drag along a significant number of Cossacks, with whom he fought on the side of the Reds, but, not satisfied with their orders, he decided with the Cossacks to go over to the side of the fighting Don. Mironov was arrested by the Reds, sent to Moscow, where he was shot. But it will be later. In the meantime, there was a great turmoil on the Don. If the Cossack population still hesitated, and only in part of the villages did the prudent voice of the old people prevail, then the nonresident (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, non-residents hoped to take part in the division of officer, landlord Cossack lands.

Other armed forces in the south were detachments of the Volunteer Army, which was being formed, 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. The goal of General Alekseev was to use the southeastern base of the armed forces in order to gather the remaining staunch officers, cadets, old soldiers and organize from them the army necessary to restore order in Russia. Despite the complete lack of funds, Alekseev enthusiastically set to work. On Barochnaya Street, the premises of one of the infirmaries was turned into an officer's hostel, which became the cradle of volunteerism. Soon the first donation, 400 rubles, was received. This is all that Russian society allocated to its defenders in November. But people simply went to the Don, having no idea what awaits them, groping, in the dark, through the solid Bolshevik sea. They went to where the age-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 on the Don. He wanted to go further to the Volga, and from there to Siberia. He considered it more correct that General Alekseev remained 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 deal in Siberia. He rushed into space. But representatives of the "National Center" who came to Novocherkassk from Moscow insisted that Kornilov stay 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 to form the Don Army and manage 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, there you can put things on a grand scale. Here, Alekseev alone can easily cope with the matter. Kornilov was eager to go to Siberia with all his heart and soul, he wanted to be released, and he did not take much interest in the work on the formation of the Volunteer Army. Kornilov's fears that he would have friction and misunderstandings with Alekseev were justified from the first days of their joint work. The forced abandonment 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 leave for him and the business started in Novocherkassk might fall apart. The formation of the Good Army moved slowly, on average, 75-80 volunteers were registered 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 the soldiers traveling home, in military echelons passing through Rostov and Novocherkassk, or bought through buyers in the same echelons. Lack of funds made the 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 sure that the Cossacks would defend their lands. However, the situation in the Cossack regions of the southeast turned out to be much more complicated. The regiments returning from the front were completely neutral in the events taking place, they even showed a penchant for Bolshevism, declaring that the Bolsheviks had done nothing wrong to them.

In addition, inside the Cossack regions, a hard struggle was waged against the nonresident population, and in the Kuban and Terek also against the highlanders. At the disposal of the military chieftains was the opportunity to use well-trained teams of young Cossacks, who were preparing to be sent to the front, and organize the call of the next ages of youth. General Kaledin could have had support in this from the elderly and front-line soldiers, who said: "We have served our own, now others must be called." The formation of Cossack youth from draft ages could give up to 2-3 divisions, which at that time 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 declared that they could help, but so far only in money, in the amount of 100 million rubles, in tranches of 10 million per month. The first pay was expected in January, but never received, and then the situation changed completely. The initial funds for the formation of the Good Army consisted of donations, but they were scanty, mainly due to the greed and stinginess of the Russian bourgeoisie and other propertied classes, unimaginable for 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 kulaks, P.A. Stolypin spoke prophetic words. He said: “... there is no more greedy and shameless kulak and bourgeois than in Russia. It is no coincidence that in the Russian language the phrase "fist-world-eater and bourgeois-world-eater" is used. If they do not change the type of their social behavior, we are in for big shocks ... ". He looked into the water. They did not change their social behavior. Practically all the organizers of the white movement point to the low usefulness of their appeals for material assistance to the property classes. Nevertheless, by mid-January, a small (about 5 thousand people), but very combative and morally strong Volunteer Army turned out. 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 gather units loyal to them from the Western and Caucasian fronts to the Don region. They began to threaten the Don from the Donbass, Voronezh, Torgovaya and Tikhoretskaya. In addition, the Bolsheviks tightened control of the railroads and the influx of volunteers dropped sharply. At the end of January, the Bolsheviks occupied Bataysk and Taganrog, on January 29, the horse units moved from the Donbass to Novocherkassk. Don was 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 suicide with a shot in the heart. It was a sad but logical outcome of his activities. The First Don Circle gave the leader to the elected ataman, but did not give him power.

The troop government was placed at the head of the region, consisting of 14 foremen elected from each district. Their meetings were in the nature of a provincial duma and left no 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 for December 29 to arrange the life of the Don region. In early January, a coalition government was created on an equal footing, 7 seats were given to the Cossacks, 7 to non-residents. The involvement of demagogues-intellectuals and revolutionary democracy in 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 heterogeneous pieces of the population of the Don region. Don under him 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 accounted for 48% of the population of the region, carried away by the broad promises of the Bolsheviks, was not satisfied with the measures of the Don authorities: the introduction of zemstvos in peasant districts, the involvement of peasants in participation in stanitsa self-government, their wide acceptance into the Cossack estate and the allocation of three million acres of landowners' land. Under the influence of the alien socialist element, the Don peasantry demanded a general division of the entire 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 the Soviet regime. The revolutionary-democratic intelligentsia has not outlived its former psychology and, with surprising blindness, continued the destructive policy that led to the death of democracy on an all-Russian scale. The bloc of Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries reigned in all peasant congresses, congresses from other cities, all kinds of thoughts, councils, trade unions and inter-party meetings. There was not a single meeting where resolutions of no confidence in the chieftain, the government and the Circle were not passed, protests against their taking measures against anarchy, criminality and banditry.

They preached neutrality and reconciliation with the power that openly declared: "He who is not with us is against us." In the cities, workers' settlements and peasant settlements, the uprisings against the Cossacks did not subside. Attempts to put units of workers and peasants in the Cossack regiments ended in disaster. They betrayed the Cossacks, went to the Bolsheviks and took the Cossack officers with them to torment 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 detachments occupied Novocherkassk and the military foreman Golubov, in "gratitude" for the fact that General Nazarov had 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 fighters left the city for Aksai, and then moved to the Kuban. After the establishment of the power of the Bolsheviks in Novocherkassk, terror began. The Cossack units were prudently scattered throughout the city in small groups, dominance in the city was in the hands of non-residents and the Bolsheviks. On suspicion of having links with the Good Army, merciless executions of officers were carried out. The robberies and robberies of the Bolsheviks made the Cossacks alert, even the Cossacks of the Golubovsky regiments took a wait-and-see attitude. In the villages where nonresident and Don peasants seized power, the executive committees began to divide the Cossack lands. These outrages soon caused uprisings of the Cossacks in the villages adjacent to Novocherkassk. The head of the Reds on the Don, Podtelkov, and the head of the punitive detachment, Antonov, fled to Rostov, were then 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 region. Outposts of the Bavarian cavalry stood 12 miles from Novocherkassk. Under these conditions, the Don faced four main tasks:
- immediately convene a new Circle, in which only delegates of the liberated villages could take part
- establish relations with the German authorities, find out their intentions and negotiate 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 a claim to resolving issues for the entire Army, which is why it limited itself in its work to issues of organizing the struggle for the liberation of the Don. The assembly decided to declare itself the Don's Salvation Circle. There were 130 people in it. Even on the democratic Don, it was the most popular assembly. The circle was called gray because there was no intelligentsia on it. The cowardly intelligentsia at that time sat in the cellars and basements, shaking for their lives or groveling before 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 this troubled time, when both voters and deputies risked their heads. The circle was chosen without party struggle, it was not up to that. The circle was chosen and elected to it exclusively by the Cossacks, who passionately desired 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 took apart their weapons and went to save the Don. This Circle did not have a political physiognomy and had one goal - to save the Don from the Bolsheviks, by all means 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 Circle was saved by the people's mind Don. 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 settle relations with the Germans, who occupied Ukraine and the western part of the lands of the Don army. Ukraine also claimed the Don lands occupied by the Germans: Donbass, Taganrog and Rostov. The attitude towards the Germans and Ukraine was the most acute issue, and on April 29, the Circle decided to send a plenipotentiary embassy to the Germans in Kiev in order to find out the reasons for their appearance on the territory of the Don. The talks were held in calm conditions. The Germans declared that they were not going to occupy the region and promised to clear the occupied villages, which they soon fulfilled. On the same day, the Circle decided to organize a real army, not from partisans, volunteers or combatants, but obeying laws and discipline. That, around and around which Ataman Kaledin with his government and the Circle, consisting of chatterboxes-intellectuals, trampled about for almost a year, the gray Circle of the Don's salvation decided at two meetings. The Don Army was also only in the project, and the command of the Volunteer Army already wished 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, should belong to the military ataman ...". Such an answer did not satisfy Denikin, he wanted to have large replenishments in people and materiel 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 in the evening. He was in a hurry to restore order and was not afraid of reproaches in an effort 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 should immediately take on their military appearance and put on shoulder straps and other insignia.” On May 3, as a result of a closed vote, by 107 votes (13 against, 10 abstained), Major General P.N. Krasnov. General Krasnov did not accept this election until the Krug passed the laws that he considered necessary to introduce in the Don army in order to be able to fulfill the tasks assigned to him by the Krug. Krasnov said at the Circle: “Creativity has never been the lot of the team. The Madonna of Raphael was created by Raphael, 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 proposed, if you do not accept them, then you do not trust me, you are afraid that I will use the power you have given to the detriment of the army. Then we have nothing to talk about. Without your complete trust, I cannot rule the army.” To the question of one of the members of the Circle, could he propose to change or redo something in the laws proposed by the ataman, Krasnov replied: “You can. Articles 48,49,50. You can propose any flag other than red, any emblem other than the Jewish five-pointed star, any anthem other than the International…” The very next day, the Circle considered all the laws proposed by the ataman and adopted them. The circle restored the ancient pre-Petrine title "Great Don Army". The laws were almost a 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's Salvation Circle stood the bloodied ghosts of the shot ataman Kaledin and the shot ataman 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 former Circles led to this, with the decisions of which Kaledin and Nazarov fought, but could not win, because they did not have power. But these laws created many enemies for the ataman. As soon as the Bolsheviks were expelled, the intelligentsia, hiding in the cellars and cellars, crawled out and staged 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. On the same evening, his adjutant Yesaul Kulgavov went to Kiev 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 chieftain, 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 chieftain Filimonov and the delegation of Georgia, 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 Dobrarmia both in tactics and in the strategy of fighting the Bolsheviks. The purpose of the rebel Cossacks was the liberation of the land of the Don army from the Bolsheviks. They had no further intentions to wage war outside their territory.

Rice. 3 Ataman Krasnov P.N.

By the time Novocherkassk was occupied and the ataman was elected by the Don Rescue Circle, all the armed forces consisted of six foot and two cavalry regiments of various sizes. The junior officers were from the villages and were good, but there was a shortage of hundreds and regimental commanders. Having experienced many insults and humiliations during the revolution, many senior leaders at first had a distrust of the Cossack movement. The Cossacks were dressed in their semi-military dress, there were no boots. Up to 30% were dressed in props and bast shoes. Most wore epaulettes, all wore white stripes on their caps and hats to distinguish them from the Red Guard. The discipline was fraternal, the officers ate with the Cossacks from the same boiler, because they were most often relatives. The headquarters were small, for economic purposes in the regiments there were several public figures from the villages who solved all rear issues. The fight was short lived. 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, the offensive began with liquid chains. At this time, a bypass column was moving along an intricate route to the flank and rear of the enemy. If the enemy was ten times stronger, this was considered normal for the 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 boom, overturned and took them prisoner. Sometimes the battle began with a feigned retreat of twenty miles (this is an old Cossack venter). The Reds rushed to pursue, and at this time the bypass columns closed behind them and the enemy found himself in a fire bag. 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 demanded that the officers go ahead, so their losses were very high. For example, the division commander, General Mamantov, was wounded three times and all in chains. In the attack, the Cossacks were merciless, they were also merciless to the captured Red Guards. They were especially harsh towards the 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 vice versa. At this time, the echelons of the Red troops, who fled to the east, still continued to move across the territory of the Don. But in June, the railway line was cleared of the Reds, and in July, after the Bolsheviks were expelled from the Khoper 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. A particularly difficult situation was among the Caucasian tribes, where the Russian population was scattered. The North Caucasus was raging. The fall of the central government caused a more serious shock here than anywhere else. Reconciled by the tsarist authorities, but not outlived by centuries of strife and not forgetting old grievances, the diverse 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, settled their land scores and could not oppose the Bolshevik danger of 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 car, drove it to a distant dead end and opened fire on the car. Karaulov was killed. In fact, power on the Terek passed to local soviets and bands of soldiers of the Caucasian Front, who flowed in a continuous stream from Transcaucasia and, unable to penetrate further to their native places, due to the complete blockage of the Caucasian highways, settled like locusts in the Terek-Dagestan region. They terrorized the populace, planted new councils, or hired themselves into the service of existing ones, spreading fear, blood, and destruction everywhere. This stream served as the most powerful conductor of Bolshevism, which swept the nonresident Russian population (because of the thirst for land), offended the Cossack intelligentsia (because of the thirst for power) and embarrassed the Terek Cossacks (because of the fear of "going against the people"). As for the highlanders, they were extremely conservative in their way of life, in which social and land inequality was very weakly reflected. True to their customs and traditions, they were governed by their own national councils and were alien to the ideas of Bolshevism. But the highlanders quickly and willingly accepted the applied aspects of the central anarchy and intensified violence and robbery. By disarming the passing military echelons, they had a lot of weapons and ammunition. On the basis of the Caucasian native corps, they formed national military formations.

Rice. 4 Cossack regions of Russia

After the death of Ataman Karaulov, an unbearable struggle with the Bolshevik detachments that filled the region and the aggravation of contentious issues with neighbors - Kabardians, Chechens, Ossetians, Ingush - the Terek Host was turned into a republic that was part of the RSFSR. Quantitatively, Terek Cossacks in the Terek region made up 20% of the population, non-residents - 20%, Ossetians - 17%, Chechens - 16%, Kabardians - 12% and Ingush - 4%. The most active among other peoples were the smallest - the Ingush, who put up a strong and well-armed detachment. They robbed everyone and kept Vladikavkaz in constant fear, which they captured and plundered in January. When on March 9, 1918, Soviet power was established in Dagestan, as well as on the Terek, the first goal of the Council of People's Commissars was to break the Terek Cossacks, destroying their special advantages. Armed expeditions of the highlanders were sent to the villages, robberies, violence and murders were carried out, land was taken away and transferred 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, decomposed, 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 block 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 Tertsy 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, desecration of Cossack shrines and, especially, massacres, requisitions, indemnities and robbery in the villages - all this opened my eyes to the essence of Soviet power and made me take up arms . The Bolsheviks could not lure the Cossacks. The Cossacks had land, and the will - in the form of the broadest self-government - they returned to themselves in the first days of the February Revolution. In the mood of the ordinary and front-line Cossacks, a turning point gradually occurred, it increasingly began to oppose the violence and arbitrariness of the new government. If in January 1918, Ataman Dutov, under pressure from the Soviet troops, left Orenburg, and he had barely three hundred active fighters left, then on the night of April 4, more than 1000 Cossacks were raided on the sleeping Orenburg, and on July 3, power in Orenburg again passed into the hands of the ataman.

Fig.5 Ataman Dutov

In the region of the Ural Cossacks, the resistance was more successful, despite the small number of 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 there were no non-residents among the Urals, there was a lot of land, and the Cossacks were Old Believers, who more strictly kept their religious and moral principles. The Cossack regions of Asian Russia generally occupied a special position. All of them were not numerous in composition, most of them were historically formed under 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 well-established Cossack traditions, foundations and skills for forms of statehood, they all turned out to be hostile to the impending Bolshevism. In mid-April 1918, about 1000 bayonets and sabers against 5.5 thousand of the Reds went on the offensive from Manchuria to Transbaikalia. At the same time, an uprising of the Transbaikal Cossacks began. By May, Semyonov's troops approached Chita, but they could not immediately take it. The battles between the Cossacks of Semenov and the Red detachments, which consisted mainly of former political prisoners and captured Hungarians, went on in Transbaikalia with varying 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 chieftains: Transbaikal - Semyonov, Ussuriysky - 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, by definition of historians, were in the nature of a partisan war.

Rice. 6 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 prisoners of war of Czechs and Slovaks, 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, the legionnaires, like former prisoners of war, were traitors. When the Germans attacked Ukraine in March 1918, the Czechs offered them strong resistance, but most Czechs did not see their place in Soviet Russia and wanted to return to the European front. Under an agreement with the Bolsheviks, trains of Czechs 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. With the Hungarians, the Czechoslovaks had a centuries-old and fierce hostility and enmity (how can one not recall the immortal works of J. Hasek in this connection). Because of the fear of attacks on the way by the Hungarian red units, the Czechs resolutely refused to obey the order of the Bolsheviks 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 the Czechs stretched over the whole of Siberia from the Volga to Transbaikalia. The Czech legions played a colossal role in the Russian civil war, since after their rebellion the struggle against the Soviets intensified sharply.

Rice. 7 Czech legion on the way along the Trans-Siberian

Despite the agreements, there were considerable misunderstandings in the relationship between the Czechs, Hungarians and local revolutionary committees. As a result, on May 25, 1918, 4.5 thousand Czechs rebelled in Mariinsk, on May 26, the Hungarians provoked an uprising of 8.8 thousand Czechs in Chelyabinsk. Then, with the support of the Czechoslovak troops, the Bolsheviks were 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. In the liberated areas, the formation of Russian combat units began. On July 5, Russian and Czechoslovak detachments occupy Ufa, and on July 25 they take Yekaterinburg. The Czechoslovak legionnaires themselves at the end of 1918 begin a gradual retreat to the Far East. But, participating in the battles in the army of Kolchak, they will finally finish the retreat and leave Vladivostok for France only at the beginning of 1920. Under 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, who began the fight against the Bolsheviks immediately after they came to power. On June 8, in Samara, liberated from the Reds, the Committee of the Constituent Assembly (Komuch) was created. He declared himself a temporary revolutionary power, which, having spread over the entire territory of Russia, was to transfer the government of the country to the legally elected Constituent Assembly. The risen population of the Volga region began a successful struggle against the Bolsheviks, but in the liberated places, management was in the hands of the fled fragments of the Provisional Government. These heirs and participants in destructive activities, having formed a government, carried out the same pernicious work. At the same time, Komuch created his own armed forces - the People's Army. On June 9, Lieutenant Colonel Kappel began to command a detachment of 350 people in Samara. The replenished detachment in the middle of June takes Syzran, Stavropol Volzhsky (now Tolyatti), and also inflicts a heavy defeat on the Reds near Melekes. 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 stretched from west to east for 750 miles from Syzran to Zlatoust, from north to south for 500 miles from Simbirsk to Volsk. On August 7, Kappel's troops, having previously defeated the red river flotilla that had come out to meet 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 marks, gold bars, platinum and other valuables), as well as huge warehouses with weapons, ammunition, medicines, ammunition. This gave the Samara government a solid financial and material base. With the capture of Kazan, the Academy of the General Staff, which was in the city, headed by General A.I. Andogsky, moved to the anti-Bolshevik camp in full force.

Rice. 8 Hero of Komuch Lieutenant Colonel Kappel A.V.

In Yekaterinburg, a government of industrialists was formed, in Omsk - the Siberian government, in Chita the government of Ataman Semyonov, who headed the Transbaikal army. Allies dominated Vladivostok. Then General Horvat arrived from Harbin, and as many as three authorities were formed: from proteges of the allies, General Horvat and from the board of the railway. Such a fragmentation of the anti-Bolshevik front in the east required unification, and a meeting was convened in Ufa to select a single authoritative government. The situation in parts 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 Komuch in the troops and the people. In addition, the representative of England, General Knox, said that until a firm government was created, the supply of supplies from the British would be stopped. Under these conditions, Admiral Kolchak entered the government and in the fall he made a coup and was proclaimed head of government and supreme commander with the transfer of all power to him.

In the south of Russia, events unfolded as follows. After the occupation of Novocherkassk by the Reds at the beginning of 1918, the Volunteer Army retreated to the Kuban. During the campaign to Yekaterinodar, 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. The army only by May fell into conditions that allowed it to rest and replenish for further struggle against the Bolsheviks. Although the attitude of the command of the Volunteer Army towards the German army was irreconcilable, it, having no weapons, tearfully begged Ataman Krasnov to send the Volunteer Army weapons, shells and cartridges received from the German army. Ataman Krasnov, in his colorful expression, receiving military equipment from hostile Germans, washed them in the clear waters of the Don and transferred part of the Volunteer Army. The Kuban was still occupied by the Bolsheviks. In the Kuban, the break with the center, which occurred on the Don due to the collapse of the Provisional Government, occurred earlier and more sharply. As early as October 5, with a strong protest from the Provisional Government, the regional Cossack Rada adopted a resolution on the allocation of the region to an independent Kuban Republic. At the same time, the right to choose a self-government body was granted only to the Cossack, mountain population and old-timer 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 government from among the socialists. The strife between the Cossack and non-resident populations took on ever more acute forms. Not only non-resident population, but also 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 to create a government on the basis of "parity" on the model of the Don ended in the same paralysis of power. Everywhere, in every village, the village, the Red Guard from other cities gathered, they were joined by a part of the front-line Cossacks, who did not obey the center well, but followed exactly its policy. These undisciplined, but well-armed and violent gangs began to plant Soviet power, redistribute land, seize grain surpluses and socialize, but simply to rob wealthy Cossacks and behead the Cossacks - the persecution of officers, non-Bolshevik intelligentsia, priests, authoritative old people. 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, guns. When at the end of April the villages of the Yeysk department rebelled, it was a completely unarmed militia. The Cossacks had no more than 10 rifles per hundred, the rest armed themselves with what they could. Some attached daggers or scythes to long sticks, others took pitchforks, a third spear, and others simply shovels and axes. Against the defenseless villages, punitive detachments with ... Cossack weapons came out. By the beginning of April, all nonresident 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 the commissar, the stanitsa gathering - the council, the stanitsa board - the ispokom.

Where the executive committees were captured by non-residents, their decisions were sabotaged, being re-elected every week. There was a stubborn, but passive, without enthusiasm and enthusiasm, the struggle of the age-old way of Cossack democracy and life with the new government. There was a desire to preserve the Cossack democracy, but there was no daring. All this, in addition, was heavily implicated in the pro-Ukrainian separatism of a part of the Cossacks who had Dnieper roots. The pro-Ukrainian activist Luka Bych, who headed the Rada, said: “To help the Volunteer Army means to prepare for the re-absorption of the Kuban by Russia.” Under these conditions, Ataman Shkuro gathered the first partisan detachment, located in the Stavropol region, where the Council met, intensified the struggle and presented the Council with an ultimatum. The uprising of the Kuban Cossacks quickly gained momentum. In June, the 8,000th Volunteer Army began its second campaign against the Kuban, which had completely rebelled against the Bolsheviks. This time White was lucky. General Denikin successively defeated the 30 thousandth army of Kalnin near Belaya Glina and Tikhoretskaya, then in a fierce battle near Ekaterinodar the 30 thousandth army of Sorokin. On July 21, the Whites occupy Stavropol, and on August 17, Ekaterinodar. Blocked on the Taman Peninsula, the 30,000-strong group of Reds under the command of Kovtyukh, the so-called "Taman Army", along the Black Sea coast, fights 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 size of the white army reaches 40 thousand bayonets and sabers. However, having entered the territory of the Kuban, Denikin issued a decree in the name of the Kuban ataman and the government, demanding:
- full tension from the Kuban for its speedy liberation from the Bolsheviks
- all priority units of the military forces of the Kuban should henceforth be part of the Volunteer Army to carry out nationwide tasks
- in the future, no separatism should be shown by the liberated Kuban Cossacks.

Such a gross intervention of the command of the Volunteer Army in the internal affairs of the Kuban Cossacks had a negative effect. General Denikin led an army that did not have a definite territory, a people subject to him and, even worse, a political ideology. The commander of the Don Army, General Denisov, in his hearts even called the volunteers "wandering musicians." The ideas of General Denikin focused on armed struggle. Not having sufficient funds for this, General Denikin demanded for the struggle that the Cossack regions of the Don and Kuban be subordinated to him. 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 helped to get rid of Bolshevik domination and terror. The Don government entered into contact with the German command and established fruitful cooperation. Relations with the Germans turned into 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 cartridges per pood of wheat or rye, and other supply agreements were concluded. During the first month and a half, the Don Army received from the German army through Kiev: 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 High Command, according to the laws of the Don Cossacks, such a command could only belong to the Army ataman, and before his election - to the marching ataman. This discrepancy led to the fact that the Don demanded the return of all the Don people from the Dorovol’s army. Relations between the Don and the Dobroarmiya became not allied, but relations of fellow travelers.

In addition to tactics, there were also large differences in the white movement in strategy, policy and war goals. The goal of the Cossack masses was to liberate their land from the invasion of the Bolsheviks, establish order in their region and provide the Russian people with the opportunity to arrange their own destiny at their own will. Meanwhile, the forms of civil war and the organization of the armed forces brought military art back to the epoch of the 19th century. The success 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 towards one main goal: to capture the political center of the enemy. With the capture of the center, paralysis of the country's administration occurs and the conduct of the war becomes more complicated. The Council of People's Commissars, who was sitting in Moscow, was in exceptionally difficult conditions, reminiscent of the position of Muscovite Russia in the XIV-XV 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 and a piece of daily bread. In the pathetic appeals of the leaders, there were no longer motivating 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 gets in your way" . Narkomvoenmor Bronstein (Trotsky), in his speech on June 9, 1918, indicated the goals are simple and clear: “Comrades! Among all the questions that concern our hearts, there is one simple question - the question of 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 agitation among you. We need to have a serious talk about the food situation in the country. According to our statistics, in the year 17 there was a surplus of grain in those places that are producing and exporting grain, there were 882,000,000 poods. On the other hand, there are regions in the country where there is a shortage of their own bread. If you calculate, it turns out that they lack 322,000,000 poods. Consequently, in one part of the country there are 882,000,000 poods of excess, and in another, 322,000,000 poods are not enough ...

In the North Caucasus alone, there are now no less than 140,000,000 poods of grain surpluses; in order to satisfy hunger, we need 15,000,000 poods a month for the whole country. Just think about it: 140,000,000 pounds of surplus, located only in the North Caucasus, may be enough, therefore, for ten months for the whole country. ... Let each of you now promise to provide immediate practical assistance to us to organize a campaign for bread. In fact, it was a direct call for robbery. Thanks to the complete lack 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 is one place - prison. Under such conditions, the task of the White Command in the struggle against the Bolsheviks was to have the shortest goal of capturing Moscow, without being distracted by any other secondary tasks. And in order to fulfill this main task, it was necessary to attract the widest sections of the people, especially the peasants. In reality, it was the other way around. The volunteer army, instead of marching on Moscow, got bogged down in the North Caucasus, the white Ural-Siberian troops could not cross the Volga in any way. All revolutionary changes beneficial to the peasants and the people, economic and political, were not recognized by the Whites. The first step of their civilian representatives in the liberated territory was a decree canceling 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 to establish a new order capable of satisfying the population, consciously or unconsciously, wanted to return Russia to its original pre-revolutionary position, and the peasants were obliged to pay for the occupied lands to their former owners. After that, could the whites count on the support of their activities by the peasants? Of course not. The Cossacks also 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. It was not without difficulty that the Cossacks were able to cope with their Don peasants and non-residents, but they could not defeat the entire peasant central Russia and understood this very well.

As Russian and non-Russian history shows us, when cardinal changes and decisions are required, not just people are needed, but extraordinary personalities, who, unfortunately, did not turn out during the Russian timelessness. The country needed a government capable of not only issuing decrees, but also having intelligence and authority, so 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. etc. - 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. Military publishing house. M.1983
Krasnov P.N. The Great Don Army. "Patriot" M.1990
Lukomsky A.S. The origin of the Volunteer Army. M.1926
Denikin A.I. How the fight against the Bolsheviks began in southern Russia. M.1926

In December 1918, at a meeting of party activists in the city of Kursk, L.D. Trotsky, chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic and People's Commissar for Naval Affairs, analyzing the results of the year of the civil war, instructed: “It should be clear to each of you that the old ruling classes inherited their art, their skill to govern from their grandfathers and great-grandfathers. What can we do to counter this? How can we compensate for our inexperience? Remember, comrades, only terror. Terror consistent and merciless! Compliance, softness history will never forgive us. If up to now we have destroyed hundreds and thousands, now the time has come to create an organization whose apparatus, if necessary, will be able to destroy tens of thousands. We have no time, no opportunity to seek out our real, active enemies. We are forced to embark on the path of annihilation."

In confirmation and development of these words, on January 29, 1919, Ya. M. Sverdlov, on behalf of the Central Committee of the RCP (b), sent a circular letter, known as "the directive on decossackization to all responsible comrades working in the Cossack regions." The directive read:

“Recent events on various fronts and Cossack regions, our advances deep into the Cossack settlements and disintegration among the Cossack troops compels us to give instructions to party workers about the nature of their work in these regions. It is necessary, taking into account the experience of the Civil War with the Cossacks, to recognize the only right thing is the most merciless struggle against all the tops of the Cossacks, through their total extermination.

1. Carry out mass terror against the rich Cossacks, exterminating them without exception; to carry out merciless terror against all Cossacks who took any direct or indirect part in the struggle against Soviet power. To the average Cossacks it is necessary to take all those measures that give a guarantee against any attempts on their part to new actions against the Soviet power.

2. Confiscate grain and force it to dump all surpluses at the indicated points, this applies both to bread and to all agricultural products.

3. To take all measures to assist the resettled immigrant poor, organizing resettlement where possible.

4. To equalize the newcomers from other cities with the Cossacks in land and in all other respects.

5. to carry out complete disarmament, to shoot anyone who is found to have a weapon after the deadline for surrender.

6. Issue weapons only to reliable elements from other cities.

7. Leave the armed detachments in the Cossack villages until full order is established.

8. All commissars appointed to certain Cossack settlements are invited to show maximum firmness and steadily implement these instructions.

The Central Committee decides to pass through the relevant Soviet institutions the obligation of the People's Commissariat of Land to develop in a hurry the actual measures for the mass resettlement of the poor on the Cossack lands. Central Committee of the RCP(b).

There is an opinion that the authorship of the directive on storytelling belongs to only one person - Ya. M. Sverdlov, and neither the Central Committee of the RCP (b), nor the Council of People's Commissars took any part in the adoption of this document. However, analyzing the entire course of the seizure of power by the Bolshevik Party in the period 1917-1918, the fact of the regularity of raising violence and lawlessness to the rank of state policy becomes obvious. The desire for limitless dictatorship provoked a cynical justification for the inevitability of terror.

Under these conditions, the terror unleashed against the Cossacks in the occupied villages acquired such proportions that, on March 16, 1919, the Plenum of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) was forced to recognize the January directive as erroneous. But the flywheel of the extermination machine was started, and it was already impossible to stop it.

The beginning of the state genocide on the part of the Bolsheviks and distrust of yesterday's still neighbors - the highlanders, fear of them, pushed part of the Cossacks again onto the path of fighting the Soviet regime, but now as part of the Volunteer Army of General Denikin.

The undisguised genocide of the Cossacks that had begun led the Don to a catastrophe, but in the North Caucasus it ended in complete defeat for the Bolsheviks. The 150,000-strong XI Army, which Fedko headed after Sorokin's death, was cumbersomely deploying for a decisive blow. From the flank it was covered by the XII Army occupying the area from Vladikavkaz to Grozny. From these two armies, the Caspian-Caucasian Front was created. In the rear, the Reds were restless. The Stavropol peasants leaned more and more towards the whites after the invasion of the food detachments. Highlanders turned away from the Bolsheviks, even those who supported them during the period of general anarchy. So, inside the Chechens, Kabardians and Ossetians there was a civil war: some wanted to go with the Reds, others with the Whites, and still others wanted to build an Islamic state. The Kalmyks openly hated the Bolsheviks after the outrages committed against them. After the bloody suppression of the Bicherakhovsky uprising, the Terek Cossacks hid.

On January 4, 1919, the Volunteer Army dealt a crushing blow to the XI Red Army in the area of ​​​​the village of Nevinnomysskaya and, breaking through the front, began to pursue the enemy in two directions - to the Holy Cross and to Mineralnye Vody. The gigantic XIth Army began to fall apart. Ordzhonikidze insisted on retreating to Vladikavkaz. Most of the commanders were against it, believing that the army pressed against the mountains would fall into a trap. Already on January 19, Pyatigorsk was taken by the Whites, on January 20, the St. George group of the Reds was defeated.

To repulse the White troops and to manage all military operations in the region, by the decision of the Caucasian Regional Committee of the RCP (b), at the end of December 1918, the Council of Defense of the North Caucasus was created, headed by G. K. Ordzhonikidze. At the direction of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR, weapons and ammunition were sent to the North Caucasus to help the XI Army.

But, despite all the measures taken, the units of the Red Army could not resist the onslaught of the Volunteer Army. The Extraordinary Commissar of the South of Russia, G. K. Ordzhonikidze, in a telegram addressed to V. I. Lenin dated January 24, 1919, reported on the state of affairs as follows: “There is no XI Army. She finally broke down. The enemy occupies the cities and villages almost without resistance. At night, the question was to leave the entire Terek region and go to Astrakhan.

On January 25, 1919, during the general offensive of the Volunteer Army in the North Caucasus, the Kabardian cavalry brigade, consisting of two regiments under the command of captain Zaurbek Dautokov-Serebryakov, occupies Nalchik and Baksan with battle. And on January 26, the detachments of A. G. Shkuro occupy the railway stations of Kotlyarevskaya and Prokhladnaya. At the same time, the White Guard Circassian division and two Cossack plastun battalions, turning to the right from the village of Novoossetinskaya, went to the Terek near the Kabardian village of Abaevo and, having joined at the Kotlyarevskaya station with detachments of Shkuro along the railway line, moved to Vladikavkaz. By the beginning of February, the white units of Generals Shkuro, Pokrovsky and Ulagay blocked the administrative center of the Terek region - the city of Vladikavkaz - from three sides. February 10, 1919 Vladikavkaz was taken. Denikin's command forced the XIth Red Army to retreat across the hungry steppes to Astrakhan. The remnants of the XII Red Army crumbled. The Extraordinary Commissar of the South of Russia G.K. Ordzhonikidze with a small detachment fled to Ingushetia, some units under the command of N. Gikalo went to Dagestan, and the bulk, representing already disordered crowds of refugees, poured into Georgia through winter passes, freezing in the mountains, dying from avalanches and snowfalls, exterminated by yesterday's allies - the highlanders. The Georgian government, fearing typhus, refused to let them in. The Reds tried to storm their way out of the Darial Gorge but were met by machine-gun fire. Many died. The rest surrendered to the Georgians and were interned as prisoners of war.

By the time the Volunteer Army occupied the North Caucasus, of the independent Terek units that survived the defeat of the uprising, only a detachment of Terek Cossacks in Petrovsk, headed by the commander of the Terek Territory, Major General I. N. Kosnikov, survived. It included the Grebensky and Gorsko-Mozdok cavalry regiments, the cavalry hundred of Kopay Cossacks, the 1st Mozdok and 2nd Grebensky Plastun battalions, the hundreds of foot Kopay Cossacks, the 1st and 2nd artillery divisions. By February 14, 1919, the detachment consisted of 2,088 people.

One of the first units of the Tertsians who joined the Volunteer Army was the Terek officer regiment, formed on November 1, 1918 from the officer detachment of Colonel B.N. Litvinov, who arrived in the army after the defeat of the Terek uprising (disbanded in March 1919), as well as detachments of colonels V. K. Agoeva, Z. Dautokova-Serebryakova and G. A. Kibirova.

On November 8, 1918, the 1st Terek Cossack Regiment was formed as part of the Volunteer Army (later merged into the 1st Terek Cossack Division). The broad formation of the Terek units began with the establishment of the Volunteer Army in the North Caucasus. The basis of the Terek formations in the Civil War was the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th Terek Cossack divisions and the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th Terek plastun brigades, as well as the Terek Cossack cavalry artillery divisions and separate batteries, which were both part of the Troops Terek-Dagestan region, and the Volunteer and Caucasian Volunteer armies. Beginning in February 1919, the Terek formations were already conducting independent military operations against the Red Army. This was especially significant for the white forces in the south, in connection with the transfer of the Caucasian Volunteer Army to the Northern Front.

The Terek Plastunskaya separate brigade was formed as part of the Volunteer Army on December 9, 1918 from the newly formed 1st and 2nd Terek Plastunskaya battalions and the Terek Cossack artillery division, which included the 1st Terek Cossack and 2nd Terek Plastunskaya batteries.

With the end of the North Caucasian operation of the Volunteer Army, the Armed Forces in the South of Russia established control over most of the territory of the North Caucasus. On January 10, 1919, A. I. Denikin appointed the commander of the III Army Corps, General V. P. Lyakhov, commander-in-chief and commander of the troops of the created Terek-Dagestan Territory. The newly appointed commander, in order to recreate the Terek Cossack army, was ordered to assemble the Cossack Circle to select the Army Ataman. The Terek Great Military Circle began its work on February 22, 1919. More than twenty issues were put on the agenda, but in terms of its importance, the issue of the adoption of the new Constitution of the region, which was then adopted on February 27, was in the first row. The next day after the adoption of the Constitution, the elections of the military ataman took place. They became Major General G. A. Vdovenko - a Cossack of the State village. The Big Circle showed support for the Volunteer Army, elected a small Circle (Commission of Legislative Provisions). At the same time, the Military Circle decided on the temporary deployment of military authorities and the residence of the military ataman in the city of Pyatigorsk.

The territories liberated from Soviet power were returning to the mainstream of peaceful life. The former Terek region itself was transformed into the Terek-Dagestan region with the center in Pyatigorsk. The Cossacks of the Sunzha villages evicted in 1918 were returned back.

The British tried to limit the advance of the Whites, keeping the oil fields of Grozny and Dagestan in the hands of small "sovereign" formations, such as the government of the Central Caspian Sea and the Gorsko-Dagestan government. Detachments of the British, even having landed in Petrovsk, began to move towards Grozny. Having outstripped the British, the White Guard units entered Grozny on February 8 and moved on, occupying the Caspian coast to Derbent.

In the mountains, to which the White Guard troops approached, confusion reigned. Each nation had its own government, or even several. So, the Chechens formed two national governments, which waged bloody wars between themselves for several weeks. The dead were counted in the hundreds. Almost every valley had its own money, often homemade, and rifle cartridges were the universally recognized "convertible" currency. Georgia, Azerbaijan, and even Great Britain tried to act as guarantors of the "mountain autonomies". But the Commander-in-Chief of the Volunteer Army A. I. Denikin (whom the Soviet propaganda so loved to portray as a puppet of the Entente) resolutely demanded the abolition of all these “autonomies”. By placing governors in the national regions from white officers of these nationalities. So, for example, on January 19, 1919, the commander-in-chief of the Terek-Dagestan region, Lieutenant General V.P. Lyakhov, issued an order according to which a colonel, later a major general, Tembot Zhankhotovich Bekovich-Cherkassky, was appointed the ruler of Kabarda. His assistants: Captain Zaurbek Dautokov-Serebryakov was appointed for the military unit, Colonel Sultanbek Kasaevich Klishbiev for civil administration.

Relying on the support of the local nobility, General Denikin convened mountain congresses in March 1919 in Kabarda, Ossetia, Ingushetia, Chechnya and Dagestan. These congresses elected Rulers and Councils under them, who had extensive judicial and administrative powers. Sharia law was preserved in criminal and family cases.

At the beginning of 1919, a system of self-government by the region of two centers was formed in the Terek-Dagestan region: Cossack and volunteer (both were in Pyatigorsk). As A. I. Denikin later noted, the unresolved nature of a number of issues dating back to pre-revolutionary times, lack of agreement in relations, and the influence of the Kuban independentists on the Tertsy could not but give rise to friction between these two authorities. Only due to the awareness of mortal danger in the event of a break, the absence of independent tendencies among the mass of the Terek Cossacks, personal relationships between representatives of both branches of power, the state mechanism in the North Caucasus worked throughout 1919 without significant interruptions. Until the end of the white power, the region continued to be in dual subordination: the representative of the volunteer government (General Lyakhov was replaced by cavalry general I.G. a meeting in May 1919; military ataman ruled on the basis of the Terek constitution.

Political disagreements and misunderstandings between representatives of the two authorities, as a rule, ended with the adoption of a compromise solution. Friction between the two centers of power throughout 1919 was created mainly by a small but influential part of the radical independent Terek intelligentsia in the government and the Circle. The most obvious illustration is the position of the Terek faction of the Supreme Cossack Circle, which met in Yekaterinodar on January 5 (18), 1920 as the supreme power of the Don, Kuban and Terek. The Terek faction retained a loyal attitude towards the government of the South of Russia, proceeding from the position of unacceptability for the army of separatism and the fatefulness of the mountain issue. The resolution on breaking off relations with Denikin was adopted by the Supreme Circle of the Don, Kuban and Terek with an insignificant number of votes of the Terek faction, most of which went home.

On the territory liberated from the Bolsheviks, the work of transport was adjusted, paralyzed enterprises were opened, and trade revived. In May 1919, the South-Eastern Russian Church Council was held in Stavropol. The Council was attended by bishops, clerics and laity chosen from the Stavropol, Don, Kuban, Vladikavkaz and Sukhumi-Black Sea dioceses, as well as members of the All-Russian Local Council who ended up in the south of the country. Questions of the spiritual and social structure of this vast territory were discussed at the Council, and the Supreme Provisional Church Administration was formed. Archbishop Mitrofan (Simashkevich) of the Donskoy became its chairman, the members were Archbishop Dimitry (Abashidze) of Tauride, Bishop Arseniy (Smolenets) of Taganrog, Protopresbyter G. I. Shavelsky, Professor A. P. Rozhdestvensky, Count V. Musin-Pushkin and Professor P. Verkhovsky.

Thus, with the arrival of the White troops in the Terek region, the Cossack military government was restored, headed by the ataman, Major General G. A. Vdovenko. The “South-Eastern Union of Cossack Troops, Highlanders of the Caucasus and Free Peoples of the Steppes” continued its work, the basis of which was the idea of ​​a federation of the Don, Kuban, Terek, the North Caucasus region, as well as the Astrakhan, Ural and Orenburg troops. The political goal of the Union was its accession as an independent state association to the future Russian Federation.

A. I. Denikin, in turn, advocated “preserving the unity of the Russian state, subject to granting autonomy to individual nationalities and original formations (Cossacks), as well as broad decentralization of the entire state administration ... The basis for the decentralization of management was the division of the occupied territory into regions.”

Recognizing the fundamental right of autonomy for the Cossack troops, Denikin made a reservation regarding the Terek army, which "in view of the extreme stripedness and the need to reconcile the interests of the Cossacks and mountaineers" had to enter the North Caucasian region on the rights of autonomy. It was planned to include representatives of the Cossacks and mountain peoples in the new structures of the regional authorities. The mountain peoples were granted broad self-government within ethnic boundaries, with elected administration, non-interference on the part of the state in matters of religion and public education, but without funding these programs from the state budget.

Unlike the Don and the Kuban, the “connection with the all-Russian statehood” has not weakened on the Terek. On June 21, 1919, Gerasim Andreevich Vdovenko, elected military ataman, opened the next Great Circle of the Terek Cossack Army at the Park Theater in the city of Essentuki. The Commander-in-Chief of the Volunteer Army A. I. Denikin was also present at the circle. The program of the Terek government stated that "only a decisive victory over Bolshevism and the revival of Russia will create the possibility of restoring the power and native army, bled white and weakened by civil strife."

In view of the ongoing war, the Tertsians were interested in increasing their numbers by attracting their neighbors-allies to the anti-Bolshevik struggle. Thus, the people of the Karanogais were included in the Terek army, and on the Big Circle, the Cossacks expressed their consent in principle to joining the Army "on equal terms" of Ossetians and Kabardians. The situation was more complicated with the out-of-town population. Encouraging the entry of individual representatives of the indigenous peasants into the Cossack estate, the Tertsy treated with great prejudice the demand of non-residents to resolve the land issue, to introduce them into the work of the Circle, as well as into the central and local government.

In the Terek region liberated from the Bolsheviks, a complete mobilization took place. In addition to the Cossack regiments, units formed from the highlanders were also sent to the front. Wishing to confirm their loyalty to Denikin, even yesterday's enemies of the Tertsy, the Chechens and Ingush, responded to the call of the Commander-in-Chief of the Volunteer Army and replenished the White Guard ranks with their volunteers.

Already in May 1919, in addition to the Kuban combat units, the Circassian cavalry division and the Karachaev cavalry brigade operated on the Tsaritsy front. The 2nd Terek Cossack division, the 1st Terek plastun brigade, the Kabardian cavalry division, the Ingush cavalry brigade, the Dagestan cavalry brigade and the Ossetian cavalry regiment, who arrived from the Terek and Dagestan, were also transferred here. In Ukraine, the 1st Terek Cossack Division and the Chechen Cavalry Division were involved against Makhno.

The situation in the North Caucasus remained extremely difficult. In June, Ingushetia raised an uprising, but a week later it was crushed. Kabarda and Ossetia were disturbed by their attacks by the Balkars and "Kermenists" (representatives of the Ossetian revolutionary democratic organization). In the mountainous part of Dagestan, Ali-Khadzhi raised an uprising, and in August this "baton" was taken over by the Chechen sheikh Uzun-Khadzhi, who settled in Vedeno. All nationalist and religious uprisings in the North Caucasus were not only supported but also provoked by anti-Russian circles in Turkey and Georgia. The constant military danger forced Denikin to keep up to 15 thousand soldiers in this region under the command of General I. G. Erdeli, including two Terek divisions - the 3rd and 4th, and another plastun brigade.

Meanwhile, the situation at the front was even more deplorable. So, by December 1919, the Volunteer Army of General Denikin, under pressure from three times superior enemy forces, lost 50% of its personnel. As of December 1, there were 42,733 wounded in military medical institutions in southern Russia alone. A large-scale retreat of the Armed Forces of the South of Russia began. On November 19, units of the Red Army broke into Kursk, on December 10 Kharkov was abandoned, on December 28 - Tsaritsyn, and already on January 9, 1920, Soviet troops entered Rostov-on-Don.

On January 8, 1920, the Terek Cossacks suffered irreparable losses - units of the First Cavalry Army of Budyonny almost completely destroyed the Terek Plastun Brigade. At the same time, the commander of the cavalry corps, General K.K. Mamontov, despite the order to attack the enemy, led his corps through Aksai to the left bank of the Don.

In January 1920, the Armed Forces of the South of Russia numbered 81,506 people, of which: Volunteer units - 30,802, Don troops - 37,762, Kuban troops - 8,317, Terek troops - 3,115, Astrakhan troops - 468, Mountain units - 1042. These forces were clearly not enough to contain the offensive of the Reds, but the separatist games of the Cossack leaders continued at this critical moment for all anti-Bolshevik forces.

In Ekaterinodar on January 18, 1920, the Cossack Supreme Circle gathered, which set about creating an independent union state and declared itself the supreme authority in the affairs of the Don, Kuban and Terek. Part of the Don delegates and almost all of the Tertsians called for the continuation of the struggle in unity with the high command. Most of the Kuban, part of the Don and a few Terts demanded a complete break with Denikin. Some of the Kuban and Don people were inclined to stop fighting.

According to A. I. Denikin, “only the Tertsy – the ataman, the government and the faction of the Circle – almost in full force represented a united front.” The Kubans were reproached for leaving the front by the Kuban units, proposals were made to separate the eastern departments (“Lineists”) from this army and attach them to the Terek. Terek ataman G. A. Vdovenko spoke with the following words: “The course of the Tertsy is one. We have written in gold letters "United and indivisible Russia".

At the end of January 1920, a compromise provision was developed, accepted by all parties:

1. South Russian power is established on the basis of an agreement between the High Command of the Armed Forces in the South of Russia and the Supreme Circle of the Don, Kuban and Terek, until the convocation of the All-Russian Constituent Assembly.

2. Lieutenant-General A. I. Denikin is recognized as the first head of the South Russian authorities ....

3. The law on the succession of power of the head of state is developed by the Legislative Chamber on a general basis.

4. Legislative power in the South of Russia is exercised by the Legislative Chamber.

5. The functions of the executive power, except for the head of the South Russian government, are determined by the Council of Ministers ...

6. The Chairman of the Council of Ministers is appointed by the head of the South Russian government.

7. The person heading the South Russian government has the right to dissolve the Legislative Chamber and the right to a relative "veto" ...

In agreement with the three factions of the Supreme Circle, a cabinet of ministers was formed, but "the appearance of a new government did not bring any change in the course of events."

The military and political crisis of the White Guard South was growing. Government reform no longer saved the situation - the front collapsed. On February 29, 1920, Stavropol was taken by the Red Army, on March 17 Yekaterinodar and the village of Nevinnomysskaya fell, on March 22 - Vladikavkaz, on March 23 - Kizlyar, on March 24 - Grozny, on March 27 - Novorossiysk, on March 30 - Port-Petrovsk and on April 7 - Tuapse . Almost throughout the entire territory of the North Caucasus, Soviet power was restored, which was confirmed by a decree of March 25, 1920.

Part of the army of the Armed Forces of the South of Russia (about 30 thousand people) was evacuated from Novorossiysk to the Crimea. The Terek Cossacks, who left Vladikavkaz (together with the refugees, about 12 thousand people), went along the Georgian Military Highway to Georgia, where they were interned in camps near Poti, in a marshy malarial area. The demoralized Cossack units, squeezed on the Black Sea coast of the Caucasus, for the most part surrendered to the red units.

On April 4, 1920, A. I. Denikin ordered the appointment of Lieutenant General Baron P. N. Wrangel as his successor to the post of Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the South of Russia.

After the evacuation of the Armed Forces of the South of Russia to the Crimea, from the remnants of the Terek and Astrakhan Cossack units in April 1920, a Separate Terek-Astrakhan Cossack brigade was formed, which from April 28 as the Terek-Astrakhan brigade was part of the 3rd cavalry division of the Consolidated Corps. On July 7, after reorganization, the brigade again became separate. In the summer of 1920, she was part of the Special Forces Group, which participated in the Kuban landing. From September 4, the brigade operated separately as part of the Russian army and included the 1st Terek, 1st and 2nd Astrakhan regiments and the Terek-Astrakhan Cossack cavalry artillery division and the Separate Terek spare Cossack hundred.

The attitude of the Cossacks to Baron Wrangel was ambivalent. On the one hand, he contributed to the dispersal of the Kuban Regional Rada in 1919, on the other hand, his rigidity and commitment to order impressed the Cossacks. The attitude of the Cossacks towards him was not spoiled by the fact that Wrangel brought the Don general Sidorin to justice because he telegraphed the military ataman Bogaevsky about his decision to “withdraw the Don army from the limits of the Crimea and the subordination in which it is now located.”

The situation with the Kuban Cossacks was more complicated. The military ataman Bukretov was an opponent of the evacuation to the Crimea of ​​the Cossack units squeezed on the Black Sea coast. Wrangel was not immediately able to send the ataman to the Caucasus to organize the evacuation, and the remnants of those who did not surrender to the Reds (about 17 thousand people) were only able to board the ships on May 4th. Bukretov handed over ataman power to the chairman of the Kuban government Ivanis and, together with the "independent" - deputies of the Rada, taking with him part of the military treasury, fled to Georgia. The Kuban Rada, which gathered in Feodosia, recognized Bukretov and Ivanis as traitors, and elected military general Ulagay as the military chieftain, but he refused power.

The small Terek group led by Ataman Vdovenko was traditionally hostile to the separatist movements and, therefore, had nothing in common with the ambitious Cossack leaders.

The lack of unity in the political Cossack camp and Wrangel's uncompromising attitude towards the "independents" allowed the commander-in-chief of the Russian army to conclude with the military atamans the agreement that he considered necessary for the state structure of Russia. Gathering together Bogaevsky, Ivanis, Vdovenko and Lyakhov, Wrangel gave them 24 hours to think, and thus, “On July 22, a solemn signing of an agreement took place ... with the atamans and governments of the Don, Kuban, Terek and Astrakhan ... in development of the agreement dated 2 (15 ) April of this year ...

1. The state formations of the Don, Kuban, Terek and Astrakhan are provided with complete independence in their internal structure and management.

2. In the Council of Heads of Departments under the Government and the Commander-in-Chief, with the right of a decisive vote on all issues, the chairmen of the governments of the state formations of the Don, Kuban, Terek and Astrakhan, or members of their governments replacing them, participate.

3. The Commander-in-Chief is assigned full power over all the armed forces of state formations ... both in operational terms and on fundamental issues of organizing the army.

4. All necessary for the supply ... food and other means are provided ... on a special allocation.

5. Management of railways and main telegraph lines is vested in the authority of the Commander-in-Chief.

6. Agreement and negotiations with foreign governments, both in the field of political and in the field of commercial policy, are carried out by the Ruler and the Commander-in-Chief. If these negotiations concern the interests of one of the state formations ..., the Ruler and Commander-in-Chief first enters into an agreement with the subject ataman.

7. A common customs line and a single indirect taxation are being established ...

8. A single monetary system is established on the territory of the contracting parties ...

9. Upon the liberation of the territory of state formations ... this agreement has to be submitted for approval by large military circles and regional councils, but it takes effect immediately upon its signing.

10. This agreement is established until the complete end of the Civil War.

The unsuccessful landing of the Kuban troops led by General Ulagai in the Kuban in August 1920, and the bogged down September offensive on the Kakhovka bridgehead forced Baron Wrangel to close within the Crimean peninsula and begin preparations for defense and evacuation.

By the beginning of the offensive on November 7, 1920, the Red Army had 133,000 bayonets and sabers, while the Russian army had 37,000 bayonets and sabers. The superior forces of the Soviet troops broke the defense, and already on November 12, Baron Wrangel issued an order to leave the Crimea. The evacuation organized by the Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Army was completed on November 16, 1920 and made it possible to save about 150,000 military and civilians, including about 30,000 Cossacks.

The remnants of the last provisional nationwide government and the last legitimate governments of the Cossack troops of the Russian Empire, including Terek, left the territory of Russia.

After the evacuation of the Russian army from the Crimea in Chataldzha, the Terek-Astrakhan regiment was formed as part of the Don Corps. After the transformation of the army into the Russian General Military Union (ROVS), the regiment until the 1930s was a cropped unit. So by the autumn of 1925, there were 427 people in the regiment, including 211 officers.

Discussions between modern "reds" and "whites" seem endless. A constant score is kept on who has more blood. At the same time, the main principle of the Civil War is forgotten - violence breeds retaliatory violence, which seems impossible to stop.

sons

A hundred years ago, the Southern Urals became one of the centers of the Civil War - in the spring of 1918, a powerful uprising of the Orenburg Cossacks against the Reds broke out here. On the night of April 4, the Cossacks raided Orenburg, exterminating many Soviet workers. Even women and children became victims of the raid. The Reds were able to repel the attack, after which they responded with cruel measures characteristic of the fight against the partisan movement at all times: they began to burn the Cossack villages and exterminate the rebel leaders - officers. The Orenburg military revolutionary headquarters issued an ultimatum to all Cossack villages and settlements: "To the white terror of traitors officers, junkers and Cossacks adjoining them, attacking revolutionary workers and peasants, slaughtering their families with young children, we will respond with merciless red terror, the force of artillery fire and by the strength of the revolutionary masses of workers and peasants.Let all the villages and towns remember that if any of them makes even the slightest action against the revolutionary workers and peasants, it will be swept off the face of the earth without any discrimination between the guilty and the innocent by the force of the weapons of the revolutionary troops " one .

It was then that this tragedy, which shocked many even at that harsh time, occurred. On April 9, 1918, at the Dubinovka station of the Orskaya railway, two Cossack officers were handed over by the Cossacks to the Reds and shot - brothers, podsauls Vasily and Mikhail Mikhailov. Vasily was not even twenty-six, Mikhail was thirty years old. Despite their young age, both have already managed to fight in the First World War and earn military awards.

The village of Verkhneozernaya on the right bank of the Urals, where the Mikhailovs lived, found itself in the sphere of the Cossack anti-Bolshevik uprising. The Mikhailovs, as officers, led two hundred local Cossacks, who were about to join the rebels and take part in the raid on Orenburg. It was believed that the idea to provide armed resistance to the Reds belonged to their father, General Mikhailov. However, he himself subsequently claimed that this decision belonged to the villagers themselves.

However, the Cossacks did not reach Orenburg - the raid was repulsed, and hundreds returned to their village. Then came the news of massacres of those suspected of the raid. Fearing punishment, the Upper Ozerninsky Cossacks held a gathering and sent a delegation to the Reds at the Kondurovsky junction, 14 versts from the village.

Upon their return, the delegates gathered the villagers and announced the demands of the Reds: to restore Soviet power in the village, to hand over the officers as instigators of resistance, including the Mikhailov family, and to pay half a million indemnities. The Cossacks agreed with the demands, but out of the entire Mikhailov family, only two brothers were captured, and their father, a general, managed to escape to his brother in the village of Giryalskaya. The property of the Mikhailovs during their absence in the village was distributed to the poor (later the confiscated was returned).

General Mikhailov recalled the death of his sons: “When the sons returned, the first, Mikhail, and Vasily was still in Giryal 2, I wrote a note to Vasily and sent with a cab driver, so that Vasily would come to discuss the three of us what to do next, and between the population there was already some there was anxiety, whispering. I was about to leave with Mikhail, but I was still waiting for my son Vasily, suddenly Mikhail ran in and said: "Dad, the Bolsheviks." I rushed to run towards Giryal and began to hide, and I broke up with Vasily - he came home, and In the evening, when he reached home, the Bolsheviks took him away" 3 . Did the general reproach himself for the note that led to the death of his son? For sure. But he kept silent about this.

Reconstruction of the circumstances of the execution allowed evidence from both sides. The brothers understood that their fate was unenviable, and asked to call the priest to take communion. According to an eyewitness, even in their native village, "the brothers ... insisted that they be put in one sled. They were taken. A lot of people. Women, crying and lamenting, escorted them to the outskirts of the village.

Having brought them to the station, they dropped them off again and ordered to move 15 steps away from the canvas. The brothers knelt down, prayed to God, crossed each other and hugged each other tightly, kissed each other, then both shouted: "Long live the Cossacks, we die for the Cossacks!" 4 However, the Cossack newspaper, which published such an article in 1919, may have distorted the last words of the executed in order not to propagate monarchist sentiments.

The testimony of the organizer of the shooting completes the picture of what happened. In 1934, at a meeting of the Orenburg community, veterans of the Civil War from the Reds shared their memories and revelations. The former commander of one of the first red detachments Pavel Seliverstovich Kurach (one of the streets of Orenburg was named after him) then said: “I met such officers near Orsk. When I traveled with the detachment, I caught two Mikhailov brothers. They had passports, as if they teachers from the Penza province, and the front-line soldiers say that these are the Mikhailov brothers.

When they began to interrogate them, they did not want to talk, they looked with contempt. When I was leaving Orenburg, we created a commission of inquiry. There was Blinichkin and another anarchist, I don't remember his last name, but in total there were 4 people. As the head of this detachment, I approved the decision of this commission. When they called me to the commission in the morning, I didn't say anything, but the commission decided to shoot me, and the verdict was confirmed. When they were put to death, they shouted: "Long live Nicholas II and the Cossacks" 5 .

According to a note from a Cossack newspaper, the command "please!" shouted one of the brothers, Vasily. According to this testimony, the brothers were finished off with bayonets after the execution - 13 bayonet wounds were counted on Vasily's body.

The executed were buried in their native village. The white press used the high-profile execution to whip up anti-Bolshevik sentiment.

Father

The shot were the eldest sons of Major General Fyodor Nikolaevich Mikhailov, a veteran of the Pamir campaigns, the Russian-Japanese and World War I. The general had five more sons and two daughters. Of the sons, Alexander and Nikolai were also officers; together with their father and most of the Cossack officers, they went to Grazhdanskaya after Ataman A.I. Dutov. Alexander later went with the Cossacks to China, the fate of Nicholas is still unknown.

General Mikhailov was retired for a long time 6 and was engaged in farming (he considered his property status to be average, owned ten cows and six horses, sowed 10-12 acres of land 7). The order to form hundreds, according to the general, was received from Orenburg at the end of 1917. Mikhailov allegedly did not show his initiative in this matter. However, during the retreat from Orenburg in early 1918, Ataman Dutov stayed for several days precisely in Mikhailov’s house, and his son Mikhail 8, one of the few subordinates who remained loyal to Dutov, also came to his father. Dutov went further to Verkhneuralsk, and Mikhail stayed with his father, which cost him his life.

After fleeing from his native village, General Mikhailov hid with his brother until June 1918, not knowing either about Dutov or about his sons who had gone with him. In the summer of 1918, under the blows of the Cossacks and Czechoslovaks, the Reds left the Cossack lands. General Mikhailov came out of the underground and began to serve the Whites. He did not make a big career with the Whites: in the summer of 1918 he chaired the commission for the reorganization and liquidation of military institutions that had lost their significance, in the fall he supervised the training of mobilized Cossacks who were not drafted into combat units, and at the beginning of 1919 he was expelled from this position with leaving in retired.

Revenge

Having won a temporary victory, the Whites began to administer justice and reprisals against the adherents of the Reds. When General Mikhailov met Ataman Dutov, the inconsolable father, naturally, asked to bring to justice those who had handed over his beloved sons for reprisal. Dutov replied: "Submit an application" 9 .

Subsequently, at the trial, General Mikhailov testified: “I believed my Cossacks and when I found out that they had shot my sons, I was disappointed in them. I lived on good terms with them, if they excluded me 10, then it was a handful of 3-4 people - bawlers..." 11 .

The organizers of the execution were known to the whites. The newspaper "Orenburg Cossack Bulletin" directly noted that the execution was organized by "a punitive detachment under the command of Kurach and Nazarenko" 12 . However, Kurach fought in the ranks of the Red Army, and white justice could not get to him. It was possible to punish only those who betrayed the Mikhailov stanitsa, who remained at home.

General Mikhailov, later trying to justify himself before the Soviet court, recalled his doubts: “I thought for a long time what to do, on the one hand, I had to forgive as a Christian, but, on the other hand, I felt sorry for the sons who died young, not lived , and that they were shot by their own Cossacks, who sent them to fight. And in the end I decided to apply" 13 . "I had a desire not to leave unpunished the act of the Cossacks, that they shot my innocent children," 14 Mikhailov added.

On July 29, 1918, Mikhailov spoke out of turn at the Extraordinary Congress of the 1st Military District of the Orenburg Cossack Army and asked to bring those responsible for the extradition of children to court and compensate for the losses. The congress proposed that the case be referred to a military investigative commission, and for compensation of losses, to apply to the commission for assistance to victims 15 .

The commission of inquiry arrived at the village. "Well-wishers" compiled a list of participants in extradition, which, in fact, became a firing squad. Later, the assistant to the stanitsa ataman, cornet Dmitry Elizarovich Gorbunov, was suspected of this, who appeared before Soviet justice for this. However, General Mikhailov named other persons who had died by the time of the Soviet investigation as compilers of the list. Mikhailov himself took part in the investigation, and also spoke in the press on this topic. Mikhailov was not present at the extradition of his sons and, as he later claimed, he knew only five delegates who went to the Reds, but for the rest he trusted the list.

In August 1918, 18 people were arrested in the village 16 . One of those arrested, the Cossack Vasily Loshkarev, was shot dead without trial or investigation on the way, the other, who was accidentally arrested, was released at the request of the general. On September 22, General Mikhailov spoke to the deputies of the 3rd Extraordinary Military Circle of the Orenburg Cossack army, talking about the circumstances of the extradition of his sons for reprisal. After that, he asked to be deprived of the Cossack rank and evicted from the village of the perpetrators, whose names he listed. The general, judging by the dry lines of the minutes of the meeting, did not call for their execution.

The discussion was attended by the deputy of the Verkhneozernaya village, paramedic Alexander Sergeevich Beleninov, who, on behalf of the voters, expressed sympathy for Mikhailov's misfortune, announced the execution of one of the defendants and the trial of the rest. In the spirit of the idealism of the then democratic intelligentsia, Beleninov added that “it is impossible to confine ourselves to punishment alone. In order for such phenomena not to take place in the future, it is necessary to raise the cultural level of the population and restore its lost connection with the history of the Cossacks, and for this you need to study, study and study again " 17 . The Circle decided to take the General's report into account.

Sixteen people appeared before the military field court in Orenburg in September 1918: eleven of them were shot, five were exiled to Eastern Siberia for hard labor. Mikhailov also testified. The public was not allowed into the meeting room. Ataman Dutov allegedly approved the verdict against his Cossacks not immediately, but only after a whole day of hesitation and transferring the unpopular decision to the discretion of the Military Circle 18 .

Court

General Mikhailov retreated with the Whites to Siberia and settled in Omsk, where he served in the Military Economic Society. Then he moved to Novo-Nikolaevsk. When the Reds came there, he got a job in charge of the Red Army shops. At the height of the NEP, he organized a trading company with several partners, which went bankrupt. Then he sold his property and left for Semipalatinsk and Omsk. There, his general past was revealed. Mikhailov was first fired from his new job and then arrested.

In the 1920s trials of former whites began. In the spring of 1926, an application from citizen P.A. was addressed to the Orenburg provincial prosecutor. Kosarev, in which it was reported that through the fault of General Mikhailov in October 1918, the Cossacks of the Verkhneozernaya village were shot. For six months, the general was at large on bail, but then he was imprisoned in the Orenburg provincial correctional labor house (his wife, who was unable to work, and her daughter, who was studying at school, were in poverty at that time).

The investigation was carried out carefully. Numerous witnesses were interviewed. Testimony was given by the surviving defendant in the case, I.N. Petrov, who was sent to hard labor in 1918 as a child, 19 and other persons. Mikhailov himself denied involvement in the formation of Cossack hundreds against the Reds. He considered the accusation "completely absurd". Another person involved in the case, Gorbunov, tried to disown compiling the execution list, finding a witness that the list was compiled by the Cossack G. Kuzmin 21 . Mikhailov also testified to this, but the court did not listen to these arguments.

On November 29, 1927, Mikhailov appeared before the visiting session of the provincial court, together with Gorbunov, the compiler of the execution list, at the scene in the village of Verkhneozernaya, where the bulk of the witnesses lived. Then, in connection with the amnesty for the 10th anniversary of the October Revolution, the defendants were released from the corrective labor house on bail.

From February 24 to February 27, 1928, new court sessions were held. A former deputy of the Military Circle, Beleninov, who evaded attendance due to illness, was also summoned. Numerous witnesses spoke, lawyers participated in the court hearings. Mikhailov and Gorbunov pleaded not guilty. Mikhailov denied his leadership in the formation of Cossack forces against the Reds. About the reasons why his sons went against the Bolsheviks, he said: "My sons, as officers, were brought up in this spirit, and their honor forced them to go to war." The former general made a bold statement that he considered the death sentence involved in the death of the sons of the Cossacks cruel, but did not consider himself guilty of this: gentlemen, but I did not want to take part in the suppression of these slaves, because I was completely apolitical" 24 . In his last speech, 69-year-old Mikhailov appealed to his advanced age and asked the court to allow him to die in freedom 25 . Following the meeting, Mikhailov and Gorbunov were again taken into custody.

The court, under Article 58-11 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR, sentenced the former General Mikhailov to death with a replacement in connection with an amnesty with ten years in prison with strict isolation and with a defeat in all political rights for five years. A six-month pre-trial detention from November 1926 to March 1927 and from September to November 1927 was taken into account. Gorbunov was sentenced to three years in prison with strict isolation and disqualification for two years. His six months' stay in custody was also taken into account 26 . The Orenburg newspaper "Smychka" responded to the trial with an article with the biting title "Executioners" 27 .

Mikhailov tried to challenge the harsh sentence, his wife appealed to the Supreme Court of the RSFSR and to the Society for Assistance to Political Prisoners to E.P. Peshkova, but nothing came of it. The letter to Peshkova also contained the following lines: “It is possible that, from the point of view of moral ethics, his act was also immoral, but one must understand that one cannot demand complete self-sacrifice from one’s own father. Such a heroic, I would say, non-resistance to evil, not everyone If we take into account the whole situation in which all these events took place, then the mental and moral state of my husband at that moment was quite loyal. The society itself chose my sons as commanders of detachments against the Soviet regime, but then itself for her personal interests decided to recoup at the expense of their young lives.Before their blood had cooled, political events changed, and now, under the fresh impression of all this, the father decided to complain about his fate.

Ten years later, at the dawn of the second decade of the existence of Soviet power, the proletarian court found my husband's actions to be terrorist directed against Soviet power.

He can be judged in this case only for the fact that he could not overcome his parental feelings and brought a complaint, but he had nothing in common with politics and counter-revolution.

Gorbunov was released in 1930. Mikhailov, according to some sources, lived for more than 90 years. In 1993, both were rehabilitated as repressed for political reasons.

The bloody whirl did not spare anyone in that story. Today it is impossible to make out who launched this flywheel - red or white. In 1918, not without the help of General Mikhailov, the Cossacks involved in the extradition of his children for execution were shot. Those events later broke the life of the general himself. In 1937, the organizer of their execution P.S. Kurach. His ashes rest at the Kommunarka training ground. Soviet power also reached the brother of the executed Alexander, who settled in Chinese Harbin. After World War II, he was arrested, taken to the USSR and ended up in camps. Freed, he settled in Chelyabinsk next to his surviving brother Leonid.

1. Proceedings of the Orenburg Provincial Executive Committee of the Soviets of Workers', Peasants' and Cossacks' Deputies. 1918. No. 49. 11.04. C. 1.
2. The village of Giryalskaya.
3. State archive of the Orenburg region (GAOO). F. R-636. Op. 2. D. 62. L. 124-124v.
4. Martyrs of the Cossacks // Orenburg Cossack Bulletin. 1919. No. 63. 10.04. C. 2.
5. Orenburg state archive of socio-political history. F. 7924. Op. 1. D. 221b. L. 154.
6. RGVIA. F. 409. Op. 2. D. 30139. P / s 331-780; Ganin A.V., Semenov V.G. The officer corps of the Orenburg Cossack army 1891-1945. Biographical guide. M., 2007. S. 371-372.
7. SAOO. F. R-636. Op. 2. D. 62. L. 123.
8. Ibid. L. 124.
9. Ibid. L. 125.
10. From the Cossacks.
11. SAOO. F. R-636. Op. 2. D. 62. L. 124v.
12. Martyrs of the Cossacks. C. 2.
13. SAOO. F. R-636. Op. 2. D. 62. L. 125.
14. Ibid. L. 125ob.
15. Protocol No. 6 of the meeting of the Extraordinary Congress of the 1st district of the Orenburg Cossack army of 07/29/1918.
16. SAOO. F. R-636. Op. 2. D. 62. L. 1v.
17. Protocols of the 3rd emergency Military Circle of the Orenburg Cossack army. Orenburg, 1918. S. 60.
18. SAOO. F. R-636. Op. 2. D. 62. L. 125, 140.
19. Ibid. L. 22-22v.
20. Ibid. L. 28.
21. Ibid. L. 108.
22. Ibid. L. 116.
23. Ibid. L. 124.
24. Ibid. L. 126.
25. Ibid. L. 138.
26. Ibid. L. 141-141v.
27. Bow. 1928. No. 53 (858). 02.03. S. 7.
28. GA RF. ]F. R-8409. Op. 1 D. 247. L. 155ob..

I express my gratitude to the director of the State Archive of the Orenburg Region I.A. Jim, head of the reading room of the B.A. Melkonyan and Ph.D. V.G. Semenov for assistance in preparing the article.

* The study was carried out with the financial support of the Russian Foundation for Basic Research within the framework of project No. 17-81-01022 a(c) "History of the Civil War in Russia 1917-1922 in the documents of officers of the Russian army".

January marks one hundred years since the adoption by the organizational bureau (Orgburo) of the RCP(b) of the so-called "Circular letter of the Central Committee on the attitude towards the Cossacks" ("To all responsible comrades working in the Cossack regions").

The document was adopted on January 24, 1919. This controversial document was in effect for less than two months, until March 16, 1919, when it was suspended. In modern bourgeois propaganda, this "circular letter" is widely used to whip up anti-Soviet sentiments in the historical regions of the Cossacks, primarily on the Don. Therefore, it is important to know why this document was adopted, what its effect was, and why its effect was canceled.

Bourgeois anti-communist propaganda is inventing itself in every possible way, trying to portray the "circular letter" as a kind of directive that set in motion the "genocide of the Cossacks" along ethnic lines. In publications on this topic, propagandists compete in Solzhenitsyn's style - who will name the largest number of Cossacks "shot by the Bolsheviks." True, it is not clear - if the Bolsheviks carried out the "genocide" of the Cossacks, then where did the people who call themselves Cossacks come from today? And why, if there was a "genocide", then the Bolsheviks, who won the civil war, did not shoot the ancestors of these people?

The appeal "To all responsible comrades ..." was adopted by the Orgburo, led by Y. Sverdlov, which gives some publicists reason to claim that he was the author of the document. However, by 1919 Sverdlov held a number of posts and signed many documents. The topic of dealing with the Cossacks was never his topic. In fact, the authors of the "circular letter" remained unknown. There are versions that the text of the document could have been developed in the People's Commissariat for Military and Naval Affairs. However, most historians are inclined to believe that it was prepared by the Don Bureau (Donburo) of the RCP(b) and adopted by the Organizing Bureau based on a report from the Don. The Orgburo itself consisted of three people - Sverdlov, M. Vladimirsky and N. Krestinsky.

In modern publications, they like to quote the first paragraph of the letter: “To carry out mass terror against the rich Cossacks, exterminating them without exception; to carry out merciless mass terror against all Cossacks in general who took any direct or indirect part in the struggle against Soviet power. It is necessary to apply to the average Cossacks all those measures that give a guarantee against any attempts on their part to new actions against the Soviet power.

Thus, the document deals with the fight against the rich and the Cossacks who fought against the Soviets. Citing this paragraph, anti-Soviet propagandists immediately begin to assert with foam at the mouth: you see, you see, this is an order to kill Cossacks ... They try not to turn attention, blurting out the essence.

The document stated that to the average Cossacks "it is necessary to apply all those measures that give a guarantee against any attempts on their part to new performances." The measures are not indicated, and it is obvious that different measures were assumed. But modern liars do not even notice this, repeating: "... terror, terror ...". Some scribblers realize that there are not enough arguments and falsify the document by adding the “same” particle to the text. It turns out: "all the same measures must be applied to the average Cossacks ...". So they try to convince that the Soviet government did not make a difference between the rich and the average Cossacks. But fortunately, photocopies of the "circular letter" exist in the public domain, which expose the forgery.

The existence of poor Cossacks, who supported Soviet power and fought for it with weapons in their hands, and, accordingly, did not belong to either the enemies - the rich Cossacks, or the hesitant average Cossacks, modern hacks do not remember at all. Some kind of strange picture of "genocide" is obtained ...

But everything falls into place if we remember who today, at the beginning of the 21st century, calls themselves "Cossacks" and draws an informational picture in this topic.

Let's take, for example, a person who today holds the position of "ataman of the military Cossack society" Great Don Host "" - Viktor Goncharov. ... And we find out that he is also the deputy governor of the Rostov region.

Or let's take the "ataman of the Kuban Cossack army" - Nikolai Doluda. And then we find out that he is also the Deputy Governor of the Krasnodar Territory. And so - throughout the power vertical in the modern "Cossacks". Its leaders are at the same time officials, big businessmen, deputies from United Russia…

Now it is clear why they perceive the directive of 1919 on the extermination of wealthy Cossacks - enemies of Soviet power - is perceived as a call for the "destruction of the Cossacks." Because today they themselves are “rich Cossacks”. The cat smells whose meat it has eaten. The only pity is that they are trying to draw into the anti-Soviet bacchanalia also ordinary members of the Cossack societies, who are not “rich Cossacks”.

Let's move on to what were the consequences and results of the action of the "circular letter" and why it was necessary to cancel it. At the beginning of 1919, only the northern part of the Don region (Upper Don) was occupied by the Red Army. The rest of the Don continued to remain in the hands of the Whites (which is why the Bolsheviks could not arrange a "genocide" against the Cossacks, even if they had such an intention). How many Cossacks were shot as a result of terror? Member of the Donkom of the RCP(b) S. Syrtsov (future "right-wing deviationist", himself shot in 1937) reported: “Mass executions were carried out in the region. Exact figures are not available (over 300). The mood of the Cossack population from the very beginning was depressed, but oppositional. The planned conspiracy was revealed, the participants were shot. The conduct of terror was hampered by the opposition of the 8th Army.

Thus, the number of those executed was about 300 people. On the "genocide" is clearly not drawn. It is another matter that the January directive of the Orgburo, which staked on terror, actually set in motion excesses in the localities. The northern part of the Don region was occupied by Red Army units, which consisted mainly of Red Army peasants who were not friendly to the Cossacks. The events of 1905 were still remembered, when the Cossack units, loyal to the tsar, mercilessly suppressed peasant uprisings. The Red Army soldiers also saw the cruelty of the White Cossacks towards the peasant population on the Don during the civil war. The reciprocal hatred of the peasants for the Cossacks gave rise to abuses and led to unnecessary repressions against the Cossack population. But, as we see from Syrtsov's report, even then the leadership of the 8th Army prevented the implementation of unnecessary measures of terror. The point of the directive on terror “in relation to all Cossacks in general who took ... participation in the fight against Soviet power” was generally absurd and impracticable, since in 1918 a significant number of Cossacks who had previously fought on the side of the Whites transferred to the Red Army - sometimes they crossed over with entire regiments .

However, local excesses, coupled with White Guard agitation, which frightened the Cossacks with the coming "horrors of Bolshevism", led to the fact that on March 11, 1919, an anti-Soviet rebellion broke out in the north of the Don.

The situation was analyzed in Moscow by the Soviet government. On March 16, a plenum of the Central Committee of the RCP(b) was held with the participation of V.I. Lenin and I.V. Stalin. The plenum decided that the decision of the Orgburo was "impossible for the Don Cossacks" and suspended "the use of measures against the Cossacks", in fact canceled the "circular letter". The kink has been eliminated.

Today, bourgeois propaganda in every possible way exaggerates the consequences of the “circular letter” (which was in effect for less than two months), attributing “cruelty” to the Bolsheviks, but does not want to notice the real atrocities of the White Guards, the reaction to which was, among other things, that directive. Meanwhile, it is the actions of the Whites - both in relation to the Cossacks who supported the Soviet power, and in relation to the peasant population ("non-residents") - that fall under the definition of genocide.

In 1918, during the reign of the white general Krasnov on the Don, a real policy of “decossackization” was carried out, when the Cossacks, accused of sympathizing with the Soviets, were expelled from the Cossack class. Exclusion meant expulsion from the territory of the Cossack region. According to historians, over 30 thousand Cossacks were subjected to such expulsion, according to the "stanitsa sentences".

The peasant population, who did not submit to the whites, was also subject to expulsion. Let's turn to the documents of the Whites themselves. On August 29, 1918, General Krasnov wrote an order about the situation in the white "1st Don Plastun Division", recruited from the peasants. Revolutionary agitation was discovered in the division. In response to this, the white general ordered "the families of all the listed guilty persons to be immediately sent outside the all-great Don army, and the property of the latter to be confiscated." “In the event of a repetition of these sad phenomena, I will disband the units from the peasants with all the further consequences for them, that is, the eviction of families from the army,” the general threatened.

On November 6, 1918, Krasnov repeated similar threats about the expulsion of the non-Cossack population against the inhabitants of the Taganrog district, who thwarted the mobilization into the White Army. “I warn the inhabitants of the Taganrog district that if by the future recruitment they do not recover from Bolshevism and do not give the army a healthy and honest contingent of recruits, then all those families in which there are scoundrel soldiers or who evade the supply of recruits will be deprived of the right to land: the land and property they have will be taken away to the army, the lands and property will be transferred to the defenders of the Don, and they themselves will be expelled from the Army as beggars. Then do not let these worthless sons of our country bother me with requests for mercy to their elderly parents, wives and small children. There should be no place for tares among the rich fields of the Don ... ”, - said the White Guard leader.

Why, then, does modern bourgeois propaganda not write about "genocide" in this case?

In the case where the masses of the people rose to open resistance, the White Guards passed with fire and sword. The inhabitants of the village of Stepanovka rose in revolt, shooting one Cossack and capturing a white officer. “For the murdered Cossack, I order 10 inhabitants to be hanged in the village of Stepanovka ... For capturing an officer, burn the entire village,” wrote the order on November 10 (October 28, old style), General Denisov, Chief of Staff of the White Army.

“I forbid arresting workers, but I order them to be shot or hanged”, “I order all arrested workers to be hanged on the main street and not removed for three days,” General Denisov wrote in his orders dated November 23 (November 10 old style).

Fleeing from the reprisals of the White Guards, tens of thousands of people already in the summer of 1918 fled along with the retreating Red detachments. “With the 1st Don Rifle Division, thousands of refugees moved east to Tsaritsyn. With the liberation of the Martyno-Orlovsky detachment, the number of refugees increased to eighty thousand. This huge mass of people moved on foot, in carts, in railway echelons. People brought with them their meager property, drove cattle. It was hot, the vegetation dried up, clouds of caustic dust hung over the roads. In the area between Zimovniki and Kotelnikovsky there is no good fresh water, lakes and rivers here, with rare exceptions, are bitter-salty. People and animals suffered from excruciating heat and thirst, suffocated from the dust, and were exhausted from hunger. The weak could not stand, fell and died either from hunger and thirst, or from widespread infectious diseases. It was scary to watch how exhausted people, along with animals, fell into dirty puddles, teeming with all sorts of vile, near which the dying lay ... , a native of the Don peasants, Semyon Budyonny.

Isn't this a real genocide?

The rule of the White Guards in the Don and Kuban, in the Urals and Siberia in 1918-1919 demonstrated who is who in the civil war: it convincingly showed that the whites, henchmen of the capitalists and landowners, are the enemies of the working man, be he a Cossack or a peasant.

On February 29, 1920, the first All-Russian Congress of Labor Cossacks opened in Moscow. The congress adopted a resolution in which it emphasized the need to strengthen the unity of workers, peasants and labor Cossacks. Those Cossacks who, under duress or out of darkness, fought on the side of the Whites were offered amnesty in case of surrender. Lenin spoke at the congress, who said that the difficulties of the civil war "rallied the workers and forced the peasants and the laboring Cossacks" to follow the "truth of the Bolsheviks."

In 1920, the white generals were finally defeated. The end of the civil war opened the way for the popular masses in the South of Russia, including the Cossack population, to build a new society.

· 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, the Cossacks in everyday life were the same farmers as 75% of the Russian population, they carried 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 inside 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 in 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 "lashers" and "royal satraps and guardsmen."

Therefore, in the rebellion that arose in the capital of Russia, the Cossacks were inert and left the government to decide the issue of restoring order by the forces of other troops. After the abdication of the sovereign and the entry into the government of the country of the Provisional Government, the Cossacks considered the succession of power legitimate and were ready to support the new government. But this attitude gradually 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 destructive power, and the instructions of the Council of Cossack troops, which acted 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 get drunk on revolutionary freedoms and, having made some local changes, continued to live in the old way, without producing any economic, much less social upheavals. At the front in the military units, the order for the army, which completely changed the basis of the military order, was accepted by the Cossacks with bewilderment and continued to maintain order and discipline in the units under the new conditions, most often electing their former commanders and chiefs. There were no refusals to execute orders, and there was also no settling of personal scores with the command staff. But the tension gradually increased. The population of the Cossack regions and the Cossack units at the front were subjected to active revolutionary propaganda, which involuntarily had to be reflected in their psychology and forced them to carefully listen to the calls and demands of the revolutionary leaders. In the field of the Don army, one of the important revolutionary acts was the removal of the chief ataman Count Grabbe, replacing him with the elected ataman of Cossack origin, General Kaledin, and restoring the convocation of public representatives to the Military Circle, according to the custom that existed from antiquity, until the reign of Emperor Peter I. After which their life continued to walk without much disturbance. The question of relations with the non-Cossack population arose, which, psychologically, followed the same revolutionary paths as the population of the rest of Russia. 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 changed, and it was promised that the Cossacks would be freed from the oppression 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 set about fulfilling their promises. In November 1917, the Council of People's Commissars invited all the warring countries to start peace negotiations, but the Entente countries refused. Then Ulyanov sent a delegation to German-occupied Brest-Litovsk for separate peace talks 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 Brest Peace” 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 hands of the Germans were untied to continue the war in the west. In early March, the German army began to advance along the entire front to occupy the territories given by the Bolsheviks under a 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. The diplomatic defeat of Russia in Brest-Litovsk was caused not only by the venality, 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, for all the precariousness of its position, behind the back of a 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 with the slogan "we stop the war, but do not sign peace" broke off the negotiations. 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 terms of the peace. In view of the complete inability of the Sovietized old army and the rudiments of the Red Army to withstand even a limited advance of the 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 Petlyura "from the throne", placing the puppet hetman Skoropadsky on him.

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

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

After the conclusion of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk by the Bolsheviks, 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 liquidated the Soviets there. The allies vigilantly followed what was happening in Russia and also tried to ensure their interests, linking them with the former Russia. In addition, there were up to two million prisoners of war in Russia who, with the consent of the Bolsheviks, could be sent to their countries, and it was important for the Entente powers to prevent the return of prisoners of war to Germany and Austria-Hungary. Ports served to connect Russia with the allies, in the north Murmansk and Arkhangelsk, in the Far East Vladivostok. In these ports were concentrated large warehouses of property and military equipment delivered by order of the Russian government by foreigners. The accumulated cargo was over a million tons worth up to 2 and a half billion rubles. Cargo was shamelessly plundered, including by local revolutionary committees. To ensure the safety of cargo, these ports were gradually occupied by the Allies. Since the orders imported from England, France and Italy were sent through the northern ports, they were occupied by parts of the British in 12,000 and the Allies in 11,000 people. Import 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 57,000 Japanese units and 13,000 other allied units. But they did not overthrow the Bolshevik government. Only on July 29, the power of the Bolsheviks in Vladivostok was overthrown by the White Czechs under the leadership of the Russian general M.K. Diterikhs.

Mikhail Konstantinovich Diterichs

In domestic policy, 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, in which the Bolsheviks blamed the bourgeoisie and the "rotten intellectuals", and these classes were subjected to the most severe terror, bordering on destruction. It is still impossible to fully understand how this all-destroying force came to power in Russia, given that power was seized in a country with a thousand-year history and culture. After all, by the same measures, the international destructive forces hoped to produce an internal explosion in a troubled France, transferring up to 10 million francs to French banks for this purpose. But France, by the beginning of the 20th century, had already exhausted its limit on revolutions and was tired of them. Unfortunately for the businessmen of the revolution, forces were found 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'état, 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, who 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 Kerensky period, to the side of the Bolsheviks, which ensured their victory. In most regions of the country, Bolshevik power was established quickly and peacefully: out of 84 provincial and other large cities, Soviet power was established as a result of armed struggle in only fifteen. Having adopted the "Decree on Peace" on the second day of their stay in power, the Bolsheviks ensured the "triumphant procession of Soviet power" in Russia from October 1917 to February 1918.

"Decree on Peace" in the trenches

Relations between the Cossacks and the rulers of the Bolsheviks were determined by decrees of the Union of Cossack troops and the Soviet government. On November 22, 1917, the Union of Cossack Troops submitted a resolution informing 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, being guided by the democratic principles of self-determination of nationalities, it will not tolerate any other power in its territories than that of the people, formed by the free agreement of local nationalities without any external and extraneous influence.

Sending punitive detachments against the Cossack regions, in particular against the Don, will bring civil war to the outskirts, where vigorous work is underway to establish public order. This will cause a breakdown 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 business, leading to the disorder of the granary 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 hostilities 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 the combined detachments to the south to the starting points: Gomel, Bryansk, Kharkov, Voronezh.
Move the most active units from the Zhmerinka region to the east to occupy the Donbass. This decree created the germ of a fratricidal civil war of Soviet power against the Cossack regions. For the existence of the Bolsheviks, Caucasian oil, Donetsk coal and bread from the southern outskirts were urgently needed.

The outbreak of mass famine pushed Soviet Russia towards the rich south. There were no well-organized and sufficient forces at the disposal of the Don and Kuban governments 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 front-line Cossacks entered into an open struggle with the old. In many villages, this struggle became fierce, the reprisals on both sides were cruel. But there were many Cossacks who came from the front, they were well-armed and loud-mouthed, they had combat experience, and in most villages the victory went to the front-line youth, heavily infected with Bolshevism. It soon became clear that in the Cossack regions, strong units can only be created 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 (among the Cossacks they are called partisan) units, but this business 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 the purpose of making money.

However, the main threat to the Cossack regions was the regiments returning from the front, as 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 the 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 Donvoenrevkom, 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 foremen Golubov and Mironov, turned out to be supporters of Bolshevik ideas, and the closest employee of Golubov was the cadet Podtelkov. In January 1918, the 32nd Don Cossack Regiment returned to the Don from the Romanian Front. Having elected the military foreman F.K. 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 propagandized by him, dispersed the meeting of the Military Circle, arrested General Nazarov, who had assumed the post of ataman of the Army 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 Podtelkov, who had large sums of money with him, was captured by the Cossacks and hanged by their verdict. The fate of Mironov was also tragic. He managed to drag along a significant number of Cossacks, with whom he fought on the side of the Reds, but, not satisfied with their orders, he decided with the Cossacks to go over to the side of the fighting Don. Mironov was arrested by the Reds, sent to Moscow, where he was shot. But it will be later. In the meantime, there was a great turmoil on the Don. If the Cossack population still hesitated, and only in part of the villages did the prudent voice of the old people prevail, then the nonresident (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, non-residents hoped to take part in the division of officer, landlord Cossack lands.

Other armed forces in the south were detachments of the Volunteer Army, which was being formed, 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. The goal of General Alekseev was to use the southeastern base of the armed forces in order to gather the remaining staunch officers, cadets, old soldiers and organize from them the army necessary to restore order in Russia. Despite the complete lack of funds, Alekseev enthusiastically set to work. On Barochnaya Street, the premises of one of the infirmaries was turned into an officer's hostel, which became the cradle of volunteerism.

Soon the first donation, 400 rubles, was received. This is all that Russian society allocated to its defenders in November. But people simply went to the Don, having no idea what awaits them, groping, in the dark, through the solid Bolshevik sea. They went to where the age-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 on the Don. He wanted to go further to the Volga, and from there to Siberia. He considered it more correct that General Alekseev remained 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 deal in Siberia. He rushed into space. But representatives of the "National Center" who came to Novocherkassk from Moscow insisted that Kornilov stay 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 to form the Don Army and manage 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, there you can put things on a grand scale. Here, Alekseev alone can easily cope with the matter. Kornilov was eager to go to Siberia with all his heart and soul, he wanted to be released, and he did not take much interest in the work on the formation of the Volunteer Army. Kornilov's fears that he would have friction and misunderstandings with Alekseev were justified from the first days of their joint work. The forced abandonment 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 leave for him and the business started in Novocherkassk might fall apart. The formation of the Good Army moved slowly, on average, 75-80 volunteers were registered 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 the soldiers traveling home, in military echelons passing through Rostov and Novocherkassk, or bought through buyers in the same echelons. Lack of funds made the 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 sure that the Cossacks would defend their lands. However, the situation in the Cossack regions of the southeast turned out to be much more complicated. The regiments returning from the front were completely neutral in the events taking place, they even showed a penchant for Bolshevism, declaring that the Bolsheviks had done nothing wrong to them.

In addition, inside the Cossack regions, a hard struggle was waged against the nonresident population, and in the Kuban and Terek also against the highlanders. At the disposal of the military chieftains was the opportunity to use well-trained teams of young Cossacks, who were preparing to be sent to the front, and organize the call of the next ages of youth. General Kaledin could have had support in this from the elderly and front-line soldiers, who said: "We have served our own, now others must be called." The formation of Cossack youth from draft ages could give up to 2-3 divisions, which at that time 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 declared that they could help, but so far only in money, in the amount of 100 million rubles, in tranches of 10 million per month. The first pay was expected in January, but never received, and then the situation changed completely. The initial funds for the formation of the Good Army consisted of donations, but they were scanty, mainly due to the greed and stinginess of the Russian bourgeoisie and other propertied classes, unimaginable for 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 kulaks, P.A. Stolypin spoke prophetic words. He said: “... there is no more greedy and shameless kulak and bourgeois than in Russia. It is no coincidence that in the Russian language the phrase "fist-world-eater and bourgeois-world-eater" is used. If they do not change the type of their social behavior, we are in for big shocks ... ". He looked into the water. They did not change their social behavior. Practically all the organizers of the white movement point to the low usefulness of their appeals for material assistance to the property classes. Nevertheless, by mid-January, a small (about 5 thousand people), but very combative and morally strong Volunteer Army turned out. 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 gather units loyal to them from the Western and Caucasian fronts to the Don region. They began to threaten the Don from the Donbass, Voronezh, Torgovaya and Tikhoretskaya. In addition, the Bolsheviks tightened control of the railroads and the influx of volunteers dropped sharply. At the end of January, the Bolsheviks occupied Bataysk and Taganrog, on January 29, the horse units moved from the Donbass to Novocherkassk. Don was 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 suicide with a shot in the heart. It was a sad but logical outcome of his activities. The First Don Circle gave the leader to the elected ataman, but did not give him power.

The troop government was placed at the head of the region, consisting of 14 foremen elected from each district. Their meetings were in the nature of a provincial duma and left no 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 for December 29 to arrange the life of the Don region. In early January, a coalition government was created on an equal footing, 7 seats were given to the Cossacks, 7 to non-residents. The involvement of demagogues-intellectuals and revolutionary democracy in 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 heterogeneous pieces of the population of the Don region. Don under him 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 accounted for 48% of the population of the region, carried away by the broad promises of the Bolsheviks, was not satisfied with the measures of the Don authorities: the introduction of zemstvos in peasant districts, the involvement of peasants in participation in stanitsa self-government, their wide acceptance into the Cossack estate and the allocation of three million acres of landowners' land. Under the influence of the alien socialist element, the Don peasantry demanded a general division of the entire 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 the Soviet regime. The revolutionary-democratic intelligentsia has not outlived its former psychology and, with surprising blindness, continued the destructive policy that led to the death of democracy on an all-Russian scale. The bloc of Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries reigned in all peasant congresses, congresses from other cities, all kinds of thoughts, councils, trade unions and inter-party meetings. There was not a single meeting where resolutions of no confidence in the chieftain, the government and the Circle were not passed, protests against their taking measures against anarchy, criminality and banditry.

They preached neutrality and reconciliation with the power that openly declared: "He who is not with us is against us." In the cities, workers' settlements and peasant settlements, the uprisings against the Cossacks did not subside. Attempts to put units of workers and peasants in the Cossack regiments ended in disaster. They betrayed the Cossacks, went to the Bolsheviks and took the Cossack officers with them to torment 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 detachments occupied Novocherkassk and the military foreman Golubov, in "gratitude" for the fact that General Nazarov had 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 fighters left the city for Aksai, and then moved to the Kuban. After the establishment of the power of the Bolsheviks in Novocherkassk, terror began. The Cossack units were prudently scattered throughout the city in small groups, dominance in the city was in the hands of non-residents and the Bolsheviks. On suspicion of having links with the Good Army, merciless executions of officers were carried out. The robberies and robberies of the Bolsheviks made the Cossacks alert, even the Cossacks of the Golubovsky regiments took a wait-and-see attitude.

In the villages where nonresident and Don peasants seized power, the executive committees began to divide the Cossack lands. These outrages soon caused uprisings of the Cossacks in the villages adjacent to Novocherkassk. The head of the Reds on the Don, Podtelkov, and the head of the punitive detachment, Antonov, fled to Rostov, were then 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 region. Outposts of the Bavarian cavalry stood 12 miles from Novocherkassk. Under these conditions, the Don faced 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 a claim to resolving issues for the entire Army, which is why it limited itself in its work to issues of organizing the struggle for the liberation of the Don. The assembly decided to declare itself the Don's Salvation Circle. There were 130 people in it. Even on the democratic Don, it was the most popular assembly. The circle was called gray because there was no intelligentsia on it. The cowardly intelligentsia at that time sat in the cellars and basements, shaking for their lives or groveling before 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 this troubled time, when both voters and deputies risked their heads. The circle was chosen without party struggle, it was not up to that. The circle was chosen and elected to it exclusively by the Cossacks, who passionately desired 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 took apart their weapons and went to save the Don. This Circle did not have a political physiognomy and had one goal - to save the Don from the Bolsheviks, by all means 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 Circle was saved by the people's mind Don. 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 settle relations with the Germans, who occupied Ukraine and the western part of the lands of the Don army. Ukraine also claimed the Don lands occupied by the Germans: Donbass, Taganrog and Rostov. The attitude towards the Germans and Ukraine was the most acute issue, and on April 29, the Circle decided to send a plenipotentiary embassy to the Germans in Kiev in order to find out the reasons for their appearance on the territory of the Don. The talks were held in calm conditions. The Germans declared that they were not going to occupy the region and promised to clear the occupied villages, which they soon fulfilled. On the same day, the Circle decided to organize a real army, not from partisans, volunteers or combatants, but obeying laws and discipline. That, around and around which Ataman Kaledin with his government and the Circle, consisting of chatterboxes-intellectuals, trampled about for almost a year, the gray Circle of the Don's salvation decided at two meetings. The Don Army was also only in the project, and the command of the Volunteer Army already wished 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, should belong to the military ataman ...". Such an answer did not satisfy Denikin, he wanted to have large replenishments in people and materiel 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 in the evening. He was in a hurry to restore order and was not afraid of reproaches in an effort 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 should immediately take on their military appearance and put on shoulder straps and other insignia.” On May 3, as a result of a closed vote, by 107 votes (13 against, 10 abstained), Major General P.N. Krasnov. General Krasnov did not accept this election until the Krug passed the laws that he considered necessary to introduce in the Don army in order to be able to fulfill the tasks assigned to him by the Krug. Krasnov said at the Circle: “Creativity has never been the lot of the team. The Madonna of Raphael was created by Raphael, 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 proposed, if you do not accept them, then you do not trust me, you are afraid that I will use the power you have given to the detriment of the army. Then we have nothing to talk about. Without your complete trust, I cannot rule the army.” To the question of one of the members of the Circle, could he propose to change or redo something in the laws proposed by the ataman, Krasnov replied: “You can. Articles 48,49,50. You can propose any flag other than red, any emblem other than the Jewish five-pointed star, any anthem other than the International…” The very next day, the Circle considered all the laws proposed by the ataman and adopted them. The circle restored the ancient pre-Petrine title "Great Don Army". The laws were almost a 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's Salvation Circle stood the bloodied ghosts of the shot ataman Kaledin and the shot ataman Nazarov.

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 former Circles led to this, with the decisions of which Kaledin and Nazarov fought, but could not win, because they did not have power. But these laws created many enemies for the ataman. As soon as the Bolsheviks were expelled, the intelligentsia, hiding in the cellars and cellars, crawled out and staged 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. On the same evening, his adjutant Yesaul Kulgavov went to Kiev 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 chieftain, 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 chieftain Filimonov and the delegation of Georgia, 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 Dobrarmia both in tactics and in the strategy of fighting the Bolsheviks. The purpose of the rebel Cossacks was the liberation of the land of the Don army from the Bolsheviks. They had no further intentions to wage war outside their territory.

Ataman Krasnov Pyotr Nikolaevich

By the time Novocherkassk was occupied and the ataman was elected by the Don Rescue Circle, all the armed forces consisted of six foot and two cavalry regiments of various sizes. The junior officers were from the villages and were good, but there was a shortage of hundreds and regimental commanders. Having experienced many insults and humiliations during the revolution, many senior leaders at first had a distrust of the Cossack movement. The Cossacks were dressed in their semi-military dress, there were no boots. Up to 30% were dressed in props and bast shoes. Most wore epaulettes, all wore white stripes on their caps and hats to distinguish them from the Red Guard. The discipline was fraternal, the officers ate with the Cossacks from the same boiler, because they were most often relatives. The headquarters were small, for economic purposes in the regiments there were several public figures from the villages who solved all rear issues. The fight was short lived. 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, the offensive began with liquid chains. At this time, a bypass column was moving along an intricate route to the flank and rear of the enemy. If the enemy was ten times stronger, this was considered normal for the 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 boom, overturned and took them prisoner. Sometimes the battle began with a feigned retreat of twenty miles (this is an old Cossack venter).

The Reds rushed to pursue, and at this time the bypass columns closed behind them and the enemy found himself in a fire bag. 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 demanded that the officers go ahead, so their losses were very high. For example, the division commander, General Mamantov, was wounded three times and all in chains.

In the attack, the Cossacks were merciless, they were also merciless to the captured Red Guards. They were especially harsh towards the 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 vice versa. At this time, the echelons of the Red troops, who fled to the east, still continued to move across the territory of the Don. But in June, the railway line was cleared of the Reds, and in July, after the Bolsheviks were expelled from the Khoper 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. A particularly difficult situation was among the Caucasian tribes, where the Russian population was scattered. The North Caucasus was raging. The fall of the central government caused a more serious shock here than anywhere else. Reconciled by the tsarist authorities, but not outlived by centuries of strife and not forgetting old grievances, the diverse 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, settled their land scores and could not oppose the Bolshevik danger of 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 car, drove it to a distant dead end and opened fire on the car. Karaulov was killed. In fact, power on the Terek passed to local soviets and bands of soldiers of the Caucasian Front, who flowed in a continuous stream from Transcaucasia and, unable to penetrate further to their native places, due to the complete blockage of the Caucasian highways, settled like locusts in the Terek-Dagestan region. They terrorized the populace, planted new councils, or hired themselves into the service of existing ones, spreading fear, blood, and destruction everywhere. This stream served as the most powerful conductor of Bolshevism, which swept the nonresident Russian population (because of the thirst for land), offended the Cossack intelligentsia (because of the thirst for power) and embarrassed the Terek Cossacks (because of the fear of "going against the people"). As for the highlanders, they were extremely conservative in their way of life, in which social and land inequality was very weakly reflected. True to their customs and traditions, they were governed by their own national councils and were alien to the ideas of Bolshevism. But the highlanders quickly and willingly accepted the applied aspects of the central anarchy and intensified violence and robbery. By disarming the passing military echelons, 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 unbearable struggle with the Bolshevik detachments that filled the region and the aggravation of contentious issues with neighbors - Kabardians, Chechens, Ossetians, Ingush - the Terek Host was turned into a republic that was part of the RSFSR. Quantitatively, Terek Cossacks in the Terek region made up 20% of the population, non-residents - 20%, Ossetians - 17%, Chechens - 16%, Kabardians - 12% and Ingush - 4%. The most active among other peoples were the smallest - the Ingush, who put up a strong and well-armed detachment. They robbed everyone and kept Vladikavkaz in constant fear, which they captured and plundered in January. When on March 9, 1918, Soviet power was established in Dagestan, as well as on the Terek, the first goal of the Council of People's Commissars was to break the Terek Cossacks, destroying their special advantages. Armed expeditions of the highlanders were sent to the villages, robberies, violence and murders were carried out, land was taken away and transferred 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, decomposed, 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 block 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 Tertsy 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, desecration of Cossack shrines and, especially, massacres, requisitions, indemnities and robbery in the villages - all this opened my eyes to the essence of Soviet power and made me take up arms . The Bolsheviks could not lure the Cossacks. The Cossacks had land, and the will - in the form of the broadest self-government - they returned to themselves in the first days of the February Revolution. In the mood of the ordinary and front-line Cossacks, a turning point gradually occurred, it increasingly began to oppose the violence and arbitrariness of the new government. If in January 1918, Ataman Dutov, under pressure from the Soviet troops, left Orenburg, and he had barely three hundred active fighters left, then on the night of April 4, more than 1000 Cossacks were raided on the sleeping Orenburg, and on July 3, power in Orenburg again passed into the hands of the ataman.

In the region of the Ural Cossacks, the resistance was more successful, despite the small number of 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 there were no non-residents among the Urals, there was a lot of land, and the Cossacks were Old Believers, who more strictly kept their religious and moral principles. The Cossack regions of Asian Russia generally occupied a special position. All of them were not numerous in composition, most of them were historically formed under 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 well-established Cossack traditions, foundations and skills for forms of statehood, they all turned out to be hostile to the impending Bolshevism. In mid-April 1918, about 1000 bayonets and sabers against 5.5 thousand of the Reds went on the offensive from Manchuria to Transbaikalia. At the same time, an uprising of the Transbaikal Cossacks began. By May, Semyonov's troops approached Chita, but they could not immediately take it. The battles between the Cossacks of Semenov and the Red detachments, which consisted mainly of former political prisoners and captured Hungarians, went on in Transbaikalia with varying 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 chieftains: Transbaikal - Semyonov, Ussuriysky - 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, by definition of historians, were in the nature of a partisan 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 prisoners of war of Czechs and Slovaks, 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, the legionnaires, like former prisoners of war, were traitors. When the Germans attacked Ukraine in March 1918, the Czechs offered them strong resistance, but most Czechs did not see their place in Soviet Russia and wanted to return to the European front. Under an agreement with the Bolsheviks, trains of Czechs 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. With the Hungarians, the Czechoslovaks had a centuries-old and fierce hostility and enmity (how can one not recall the immortal works of J. Hasek in this connection). Because of the fear of attacks on the way by the Hungarian red units, the Czechs resolutely refused to obey the order of the Bolsheviks 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 the Czechs stretched over the whole of Siberia from the Volga to Transbaikalia. The Czech legions played a colossal role in the Russian civil war, since after their rebellion the struggle against the Soviets intensified sharply.

Czech legion on the way along the Trans-Siberian

Despite the agreements, there were considerable misunderstandings in the relationship between the Czechs, Hungarians and local revolutionary committees. As a result, on May 25, 1918, 4.5 thousand Czechs rebelled in Mariinsk, on May 26, the Hungarians provoked an uprising of 8.8 thousand Czechs in Chelyabinsk. Then, with the support of the Czechoslovak troops, the Bolsheviks were 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. In the liberated areas, the formation of Russian combat units began. On July 5, Russian and Czechoslovak detachments occupy Ufa, and on July 25 they take Yekaterinburg. The Czechoslovak legionnaires themselves at the end of 1918 begin a gradual retreat to the Far East. But, participating in the battles in the army of Kolchak, they will finally finish the retreat and leave Vladivostok for France only at the beginning of 1920.

Belarusian armored train "Orlik"

Under 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, who began the fight against the Bolsheviks immediately after they came to power. On June 8, in Samara, liberated from the Reds, the Committee of the Constituent Assembly (Komuch) was created. He declared himself a temporary revolutionary power, which, having spread over the entire territory of Russia, was to transfer the government of the country to the legally elected Constituent Assembly. The risen population of the Volga region began a successful struggle against the Bolsheviks, but in the liberated places, management was in the hands of the fled fragments of the Provisional Government. These heirs and participants in destructive activities, having formed a government, carried out the same pernicious work. At the same time, Komuch created his own armed forces - the People's Army. On June 9, Lieutenant Colonel Kappel began to command a detachment of 350 people in Samara. The replenished detachment in the middle of June takes Syzran, Stavropol Volzhsky (now Tolyatti), and also inflicts a heavy defeat on the Reds near Melekes. 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 stretched from west to east for 750 miles from Syzran to Zlatoust, from north to south for 500 miles from Simbirsk to Volsk. On August 7, Kappel's troops, having previously defeated the red river flotilla that had come out to meet 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 marks, gold bars, platinum and other valuables), as well as huge warehouses with weapons, ammunition, medicines, ammunition.

This gave the Samara government a solid financial and material base. With the capture of Kazan, the Academy of the General Staff, which was in the city, headed by General A.I. Andogsky, moved to the anti-Bolshevik camp in full force.

Vladimir Oskarovich Kappel

In Yekaterinburg, a government of industrialists was formed, in Omsk - the Siberian government, in Chita the government of Ataman Semyonov, who headed the Transbaikal army. Allies dominated Vladivostok. Then General Horvat arrived from Harbin, and as many as three authorities were formed: from proteges of the allies, General Horvat and from the board of the railway. Such a fragmentation of the anti-Bolshevik front in the east required unification, and a meeting was convened in Ufa to select a single authoritative government. The situation in parts 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 Komuch in the troops and the people. In addition, the representative of England, General Knox, said that until a firm government was created, the supply of supplies from the British would be stopped.

Alfred William Knox

Under these conditions, Admiral Kolchak entered the government and in the fall he made a coup and was proclaimed head of government and supreme commander with the transfer of all power to him.

In the south of Russia, events unfolded as follows. After the occupation of Novocherkassk by the Reds at the beginning of 1918, the Volunteer Army retreated to the Kuban. During the campaign to Yekaterinodar, 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. The army only by May fell into conditions that allowed it to rest and replenish for further struggle against the Bolsheviks. Although the attitude of the command of the Volunteer Army towards the German army was irreconcilable, it, having no weapons, tearfully begged Ataman Krasnov to send the Volunteer Army weapons, shells and cartridges received from the German army. Ataman Krasnov, in his colorful expression, receiving military equipment from hostile Germans, washed them in the clear waters of the Don and transferred part of the Volunteer Army. The Kuban was still occupied by the Bolsheviks. In the Kuban, the break with the center, which occurred on the Don due to the collapse of the Provisional Government, occurred earlier and more sharply. As early as October 5, with a strong protest from the Provisional Government, the regional Cossack Rada adopted a resolution on the allocation of the region to an independent Kuban Republic. At the same time, the right to choose a self-government body was granted only to the Cossack, mountain population and old-timer 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 government from among the socialists. The strife between the Cossack and non-resident populations took on ever more acute forms. Not only non-resident population, but also 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 to create a government on the basis of "parity" on the model of the Don ended in the same paralysis of power. Everywhere, in every village, the village, the Red Guard from other cities gathered, they were joined by a part of the front-line Cossacks, who did not obey the center well, but followed exactly its policy. These undisciplined, but well-armed and violent gangs began to plant Soviet power, redistribute land, seize grain surpluses and socialize, but simply to rob wealthy Cossacks and behead the Cossacks - the persecution of officers, non-Bolshevik intelligentsia, priests, respected old people. 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, guns. When at the end of April the villages of the Yeysk department rebelled, it was a completely unarmed militia. The Cossacks had no more than 10 rifles per hundred, the rest armed themselves with what they could. Some attached daggers or scythes to long sticks, others took pitchforks, a third spear, and others simply shovels and axes. Against the defenseless villages, punitive detachments with ... Cossack weapons came out. By the beginning of April, all nonresident 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 the commissar, the stanitsa gathering - the council, the stanitsa board - the ispokom.

Where the executive committees were captured by non-residents, their decisions were sabotaged, being re-elected every week. There was a stubborn, but passive, without enthusiasm and enthusiasm, the struggle of the age-old way of Cossack democracy and life with the new government. There was a desire to preserve the Cossack democracy, but there was no daring. All this, in addition, was heavily implicated in the pro-Ukrainian separatism of a part of the Cossacks who had Dnieper roots. The pro-Ukrainian leader Luka Bych, who headed the Rada, said: “To help the Volunteer Army means to prepare for the re-absorption of the Kuban by Russia.” Under these conditions, Ataman Shkuro gathered the first partisan detachment, located in the Stavropol region, where the Council met, intensified the struggle and presented the Council with an ultimatum. The uprising of the Kuban Cossacks quickly gained momentum. In June, the 8,000th Volunteer Army began its second campaign against the Kuban, which had completely rebelled against the Bolsheviks. This time White was lucky. General Denikin successively defeated the 30 thousandth army of Kalnin near Belaya Glina and Tikhoretskaya, then in a fierce battle near Ekaterinodar the 30 thousandth army of Sorokin. On July 21, the Whites occupy Stavropol, and on August 17, Ekaterinodar. Blocked on the Taman Peninsula, the 30,000-strong group of Reds under the command of Kovtyukh, the so-called "Taman Army", along the Black Sea coast, fights 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 size of the white army reaches 40 thousand bayonets and sabers. However, having entered the territory of the Kuban, Denikin issued a decree in the name of the Kuban ataman and the government, demanding:

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

Such a gross intervention of the command of the Volunteer Army in the internal affairs of the Kuban Cossacks had a negative effect. General Denikin led an army that did not have a definite territory, a people subject to him and, even worse, a political ideology. The commander of the Don Army, General Denisov, in his hearts even called the volunteers "wandering musicians." The ideas of General Denikin focused on armed struggle. Not having sufficient funds for this, General Denikin demanded for the struggle that the Cossack regions of the Don and Kuban be subordinated to him. 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 helped to get rid of Bolshevik domination and terror. The Don government entered into contact with the German command and established fruitful cooperation. Relations with the Germans turned into 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 cartridges per pood of wheat or rye, and other supply agreements were concluded. During the first month and a half, the Don Army received from the German army through Kiev: 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 High Command, according to the laws of the Don Cossacks, such a command could only belong to the Army ataman, and before his election - to the marching ataman. This discrepancy led to the fact that the Don demanded the return of all the Don people from the Dorovol’s army. Relations between the Don and the Dobroarmiya became not allied, but relations of fellow travelers.

In addition to tactics, there were also large differences in the white movement in strategy, policy and war goals. The goal of the Cossack masses was to liberate their land from the invasion of the Bolsheviks, establish order in their region and provide the Russian people with the opportunity to arrange their own destiny at their own will. Meanwhile, the forms of civil war and the organization of the armed forces brought military art back to the epoch of the 19th century. The success 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 towards one main goal: to capture the political center of the enemy. With the capture of the center, paralysis of the country's administration occurs and the conduct of the war becomes more complicated. The Council of People's Commissars, who was sitting in Moscow, was in exceptionally difficult conditions, reminiscent of the position of Muscovite Russia in the XIV-XV 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 and a piece of daily bread. In the pathetic appeals of the leaders, there were no longer motivating 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 gets in your way" . Narkomvoenmor Bronstein (Trotsky), in his speech on June 9, 1918, indicated the goals are simple and clear: “Comrades! Among all the questions that concern our hearts, there is one simple question - the question of 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 agitation among you. We need to have a serious talk about the food situation in the country. According to our statistics, in the year 17 there was a surplus of grain in those places that are producing and exporting grain, there were 882,000,000 poods. On the other hand, there are regions in the country where there is a shortage of their own bread.

In the North Caucasus alone, there are now no less than 140,000,000 poods of grain surpluses; in order to satisfy hunger, we need 15,000,000 poods a month for the whole country. Just think about it: 140,000,000 pounds of surplus, located only in the North Caucasus, may be enough, therefore, for ten months for the whole country. ... Let each of you now promise to provide immediate practical assistance to us to organize a campaign for bread. In fact, it was a direct call for robbery. Thanks to the complete lack 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 is one place - prison. Under such conditions, the task of the White Command in the struggle against the Bolsheviks was to have the shortest goal of capturing Moscow, without being distracted by any other secondary tasks. And in order to fulfill this main task, it was necessary to attract the widest sections of the people, especially the peasants. In reality, it was the other way around. The volunteer army, instead of marching on Moscow, got bogged down in the North Caucasus, the white Ural-Siberian troops could not cross the Volga in any way. All revolutionary changes beneficial to the peasants and the people, economic and political, were not recognized by the Whites. The first step of their civilian representatives in the liberated territory was a decree canceling 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 to establish a new order capable of satisfying the population, consciously or unconsciously, wanted to return Russia to its original pre-revolutionary position, and the peasants were obliged to pay for the occupied lands to their former owners. After that, could the whites count on the support of their activities by the peasants? Of course not. The Cossacks also 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. It was not without difficulty that the Cossacks were able to cope with their Don peasants and non-residents, but they could not defeat the entire peasant central Russia and understood this very well.

As Russian and non-Russian history shows us, when cardinal changes and decisions are required, not just people are needed, but extraordinary personalities, who, unfortunately, did not turn out during the Russian timelessness. The country needed a government capable of not only issuing decrees, but also having intelligence and authority, so 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.