White movement

Not to be confused with White Power Movement, White Russia, Belarus, or Nuer White Army.

The White movement,^[b] also known as the Whites,^[c] was one of the main factions of the Russian Civil War of 1917–1922. It was led mainly by the right-leaning and conservative officers of the Russian Empire, while the Bolsheviks who led the October Revolution in Russia, also known as the Reds, and their supporters, were regarded as the main enemies of the Whites. It operated as a system of governments and administrations united as the Russian State, which functioned as a military dictatorship^[24] throughout the most of its existence, and military formations collectively referred to as the White Army,^[d] or the White Guard.^[e]

White movement
Бѣлое движеніе Белое движение
Flag of Russia
Leaders	Alexander Kolchak  Lavr Kornilov †[1] Anton Denikin (see views) ... and others Mikhail Alekseyev # Pyotr Wrangel Nikolai Yudenich Grigory Semyonov  Pyotr Krasnov Sergey Markov † Anatoly Pepelyayev  Pavel Bermondt-Avalov Mikhail Diterikhs Roman von Ungern-Sternberg
Dates of operation	1917–1923
Country	Russian State
Allegiance	Russian Government (1918—1919) South Russia (1919–1920)
Group(s)	White Army[2][3] Volunteer Army White Rebel Army White movement in Transbaikal Ural Army Turkestan Army Far Eastern Army Northern Army Army of Wrangel Caucasus Army Don Army West Russian Volunteer Army AFSR Northwestern Army[4]
Ideology	Anti-communism[5] Non-predetermination [ru] Majority:[6][5] Russian nationalism[7][8] Right-wing populism[9] Antisemitism[10][11] Anti-intellectualism[10] Factions: Conservatism (Russian) Liberalism (Russian) Monarchism (Russian) Proto-fascism[10][12][13] other different ideologies
Political position	Big tent[14][15][16] Majority: Right-wing to far-right
Slogan	Great Russia, one and indivisible [ru][17][18][19]
Major actions	White Terror[20] Pogroms (1918–1920)[21]
Size	3.4 million members (peak)
Allies	See list: Allied intervention:  United Kingdom  United States Japan China[22] France Czechoslovakia Estonia Greece Italy Romania Serbia Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes Central Powers intervention: German Empire Austro-Hungarian Empire Ukrainian State Belarus Landeswehr Kingdom of Finland Don Republic Kuban PR Crimean Regional Government Alash Autonomy Mongolia
Opponents	See list: Bolsheviks and Soviet republics: Russian SFSR Far Eastern Republic Ukrainian SSR Soviet Union Latvian SSR CWP of Estonia Finnish Socialist Workers' Republic Mongolian People's Party Chinese volunteers Separatists: Ukraine Georgia Lithuania Latvia Other factions: Makhnovschyna Green armies Left SRs Right SRs and Mensheviks (after 1918)[a]
Battles and wars	Russian Civil War Southern Western Eastern North Russia Central Asian Ukrainian War of Independence Lithuanian War of Independence Latvian War of Independence Estonian War of Independence Sochi conflict Mongolian Revolution
Preceded by Russian Imperial Army Succeeded by White émigrés

Although the White movement included a variety of political opinions in Russia opposed to the Bolsheviks, from the republican-minded liberals through monarchists to the ultra-nationalist Black Hundreds,^[14][16] and lacked a universally-accepted doctrine,^[25] the main force behind the movement were the conservative officers, and the resulting movement shared many traits with widespread right-wing counter-revolutionary movements of the time, namely nationalism, racism, distrust of liberal and democratic politics, clericalism, contempt for the common man and dislike of industrial civilization;^[26] in November 1918, the movement united on an authoritarian-right platform around the figure of Alexander Kolchak as its principal leader.^[27][28] It generally defended the order of pre-revolutionary Imperial Russia,^[16][29][30] although the ideal of the movement was a mythical "Holy Russia", what was a mark of its religious understanding of the world.^[31] The positive program of the movement was largely summarized in the slogan of "united and indivisible Russia [ru]" which meant the restoration of imperial state borders,^[19][17][18] and its denial of the right to self-determination.^[32] The Whites are associated with pogroms and antisemitism; while the relations with the Jews featured a certain complexity, the movement was largely antisemitic, with the White generals viewing the Revolution as a result of a Jewish conspiracy.^[11][33][34]

Some historians distinguish the White movement from the so-called "democratic counter-revolution" led mainly by the Right SRs and the Mensheviks that adhered to the values of parliamentary democracy and maintained democratic anti-Bolshevik governments (Komuch, Ufa Directory) until November 1918,^[35][28] and then supported either the Whites or the Bolsheviks or opposed both factions.

Following the military defeat of their movement, the Whites expelled from the USSR attempted to continue the struggle by creating armed groups which would wage guerilla warfare in the USSR. Some of the former White commanders also hoped to depose the Soviet authorities by means of collaboration with Nazi Germany during World War II. In exile, remnants and continuations of the movement remained in several organizations, some of which only had narrow support, enduring within the wider White émigré overseas community until after the fall of the European communist states in the Eastern European Revolutions of 1989 and the subsequent dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1990–1991. This community-in-exile of anti-communists often divided into liberal and the more conservative segments, with some still hoping for the restoration of the Romanov dynasty.

Origins of the name

In the Russian context after 1917, "White" had three main connotations which were:

1. Reference to the French Revolution, where the forces opposing the Revolution and supporting the restoration of Bourbon monarchy used white as their symbolic colour.^[36]
2. Historical reference to absolute monarchy, specifically recalling Russia's first Tsar, Ivan III (reigned 1462–1505),^[37] at a period when some styled the ruler of Russian Tsardom Albus Rex ("the White King").^[38]
3. The white uniforms of the Imperial Russian Army worn by some White Army soldiers.

Ideology

Although the Bolsheviks had many opponents that ahered to the values of parliamentary democracy, such as the Mensheviks and the SRs, the main force of the White movement were the imperial army officers, since, unlike the moderate left politicians, they were able to organize an armed movement and had a necessary unity of common experience developed in the army and the wars the Russian Empire was involved in. Although the Whites were disunited by such factors as personal rivalries, distances between the military formations, and lack of a clearly formulated political program and doctrine and a leader with an absolute authority who could formulate those, they shared a common ideological military culture of officer corps of the Russian Empire, which included such key elements as conservatism, distrust of technology and industrial civilization, "faith in élan" as a key to victory, and conservative military anti-intellectualism. During the Civil War, the officers did not produce a political program and a critique of Bolshevism, but instead simply viewed the revolutionaries as inherently evil and expected the people to realize this and turn to their conservative values. The professional officers rejected "politics", understood primarily as party activities undermining the authority of the Tsar, and modern rational political thought promoting equality and social justice, as threats to the national spirit and the army. In such worldview, the army "stood above politics", while the defense of the autocracy was not a political act, but an article of faith. This stance was not consciously monarchist, and during the February Revolution the officers did not resist the overthrow of Tsarism in order to keep the military effort; in a similar way, they mainly abstained from defending the Provisional Government against the Bolsheviks. Most officers preferred not to engage in political struggle during initial period after October Revolution, while the organizers of the Volunteer Army represented only the most conservative minority.^[10]

The White officers believed socialist and pacifist politicians and intellectuals to be their enemies, condemning socialism as materialistic and anti-individualistic as opposed to "spiritual" and patriotic values of the army, and pacifism as an threatening these values and allied with socialism. Liberal politics were distrusted as well, and during the Civil War the Whites preferred the Tsarist bureaucrats and officers to liberal civilians to administer the White-controlled territories. Racial antisemitism was widespread in the army and in Russian society in general; the Jews could not become army officers and were mistreated in the army, the officers believing them to be guilty of spreading subversive ideologies and not being able to become good soldiers. During the Civil War, antisemitism varied among the White officers, but was a crucial element of the ideology of the Whites.^[10]

Despite their conservatism, the Whites did not openly proclaim a reactionary movement and instead attempted not to alienate potential support and to attract a broad base, avoiding controversial decisions and openly expressing their stance on the major issues, and producing programs subject to various interpretations while neglecting propaganda work and promoting positive ideals.^[10] The Whites had the stated aim to reverse the October Revolution and remove the Bolsheviks from power before a constituent assembly, dissolved by the Bolsheviks in January 1918 could be convened;^[39] There was no clear position on whether to consider the Provisional Government legitimate. However, while the socialists believed the socialist-dominated Constituent Assembly dissolved by the Bolsheviks to be legitimate, the White leaders did not recognize it and insisted on conveining a new Assembly after the Civil War. From 1918, Anton Denikin, while rejecting the outright slogans for the restoration of Tsarism popular within the officers as a possible detriment to their cause and recruitment and claiming the military could not decide for a government instead of the Russian people,^[40] began referring to a future "National Assembly". While its difference from the Constituent Assembly had never been defined, this change could imply that the Whites did not support the principles of popular sovereignity and universal suffrage.^[10] While the leaders of the movement continued to formally reject reactionary ideas, and some of the Whites accepted the ideas of the abolition of monarchy and some reforms, in genreal the movement sought to reestablish the traditional imperial social order.^[29][30] During the last phase of its existence, the movement under the leadership of Baron Pyotr Wrangel reverted to the term "Constituent Assembly", but issued a manifesto which advocated the necessity of "the Russian people" choosing "its own MASTER," implying that Wrangel meant a new Tsar.^[41]

The Whites presented themselves as proponents of Russian partiotism, nationalism and conservatism as opposed to internationalism and revolutionary social programme of the Bolsheviks. They proclaimed that they were fighting "for Russia" and implied that Russia as a political entity could exist only on the basis of traditional social and political principles congruent with the history of Russia, and those who wanted to fundamentally change the social and political order were thus against Russia. They proclaimed that the army "stood above classes" just as above "politics" and were reluctant to hesitant to solve social contradictions, partially because it would alienate the support of the landowners and owning classes. Although such leaders as Denikin and Kolchak made attempts to implement a land reform which proposed a compulsory alienation of land with compensation to former owners, these attempts were sabotaged by the lower-ranking officers and Tsarist bureaucrats to which the White leaders granted the authority to implement the reform.^[42][43]

The Whites rejected ethnic particularism and separatism.^[44]

The propaganda service of the Volunteer Army, the Osvag [ru] (Russian: ОСВАГ (ОСВедомительное АГентство), romanized: OSVAG (OSVedomitelnoe AGentstvo), lit. 'Informing Agency'), made the claim that "the Jews must pay for everything: for the February and October revolutions, for Bolshevism and for the peasants who took their land from the owners". The organization also reissued The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Although Denikin's troops committed only 17.2% of the pogroms (most of which were carried out by Ukrainian nationalists or by rebel armies not affiliated with any side), "white" officers praise soldiers who commit anti-Semitic crimes, some of whom even receive bonuses.^[45]

British parliamentary influential leader Winston Churchill (1874–1965) personally warned General Anton Denikin (1872–1947), formerly of the Imperial Army and later a major White military leader, whose forces effected pogroms and persecutions against the Jews:

[M]y task in winning support in Parliament for the Russian Nationalist cause will be infinitely harder if well-authenticated complaints continue to be received from Jews in the zone of the Volunteer Armies.^[46]

However, Denikin did not dare to confront his officers and remained content with vague formal condemnations.

Coat of Arms of the Kolchak government

Aside from being anti-Bolshevik and anti-communist^[47] and patriotic, the Whites had no set ideology or main leader.^[48] The White Armies did acknowledge a single provisional head of state in a Supreme Governor of Russia in a Provisional All-Russian Government, but this post was prominent only under the leadership in the war campaigns during 1918–1920 of Admiral Alexander Kolchak, formerly of the previous Russian Imperial Navy.^[49]

The movement had no set foreign policy. Whites differed on policies toward the German Empire in its extended occupation of western Russia, the Baltic states, Poland, and Ukraine on the Eastern Front in the closing days of the World War, debating whether or not to ally with it.^[40] Admiral Alexander Kolchak succeeded in creating a temporary wartime government in Omsk, acknowledged by most other White leaders, but it ultimately disintegrated after Bolshevik military advances.^[6]

Some warlords who were aligned with the White movement, such as Grigory Semyonov and Roman Ungern von Sternberg, did not acknowledge any authority but their own. Consequently, the White movement had no unifying political convictions, as members could be monarchists, republicans,^[25] rightists, or Kadets.^[50] Among White Army leaders, neither General Lavr Kornilov nor General Anton Denikin were monarchists, yet General Pyotr Nikolayevich Wrangel was a monarchist willing to fight for a republican Russian government. Moreover, other political parties supported the anti-Bolshevik White Army, among them the Socialist Revolutionary Party, and others who opposed Lenin's Bolshevik coup in October 1917. Depending on the time and place, those White Army supporters might also exchange right-wing allegiance for allegiance to the Red Army.

Unlike the Bolsheviks, the White Armies did not share a single ideology, methodology, or political goal. They were led by conservative generals with different agendas and methods, and for the most part they operated quite independently of each other, with little coordination or cohesion. The composition and command structure of White armies also varied, some containing hardened veterans of World War I, others more recent volunteers. These differences and divisions, along with their inability to offer an alternative government and win popular support, prevented the White armies from winning the Civil War.^[51][52]

Structure

White Army

Main articles: White Army, White Terror (Russia), and Pogroms during the Russian Civil War

See also: Russian Army (1919), Volunteer Army, Siberian Army, and West Russian Volunteer Army

"Why aren't you in the army?", Volunteer Army recruiting poster during the Russian Civil War

Kornilov's Shock Detachment (8th Army), later became the Volunteer Army's elite Shock Regiment

The Volunteer Army in South Russia became the most prominent and the largest of the various and disparate White forces.^[10] Starting off as a small and well-organized military in January 1918, the Volunteer Army soon grew. The Kuban Cossacks joined the White Army and conscription of both peasants and Cossacks began. In late February 1918, 4,000 soldiers under the command of General Aleksei Kaledin were forced to retreat from Rostov-on-Don due to the advance of the Red Army. In what became known as the Ice March, they traveled to Kuban in order to unite with the Kuban Cossacks, most of whom did not support the Volunteer Army. In March, 3,000 men under the command of General Viktor Pokrovsky joined the Volunteer Army, increasing its membership to 6,000, and by June to 9,000. In 1919 the Don Cossacks joined the Army. In that year between May and October, the Volunteer Army grew from 64,000 to 150,000 soldiers and was better supplied than its Red counterpart.^[53] The White Army's rank-and-file comprised active anti-Bolsheviks, such as Cossacks, nobles, and peasants, as conscripts and as volunteers.

The White movement had access to various naval forces, both seagoing and riverine, especially the Black Sea Fleet.

Aerial forces available to the Whites included the Slavo-British Aviation Corps (S.B.A.C.).^[54] The Russian ace Alexander Kazakov operated within this unit.

Administration

The White movement's leaders and first members^[55] came mainly from the ranks of military officers. Many came from outside the nobility, such as generals Mikhail Alekseyev and Anton Denikin, who originated in serf families, or General Lavr Kornilov, a Cossack.

The White generals never mastered administration;^[56] they often utilized "prerevolutionary functionaries" or "military officers with monarchististic inclinations" for administering White-controlled regions.^[57]

The White Armies were often lawless and disordered.^[39] Also, White-controlled territories had multiple different and varying currencies with unstable exchange-rates. The chief currency, the Volunteer Army's ruble, had no gold backing.^[58]

Ranks and insignia

Main article: Ranks and insignia of the White Movement

Theatres of operation

Russian Civil War in the west

The Whites and the Reds fought the Russian Civil War from November 1917 until 1921, and isolated battles continued in the Far East until June 1923. The White Army—aided by the Allied forces (Triple Entente) from countries such as Japan, the United Kingdom, France, Greece, Italy and the United States and (sometimes) the Central Powers forces such as Germany and Austria-Hungary—fought in Siberia, Ukraine, and in Crimea. They were defeated by the Red Army due to military and ideological disunity, as well as the determination and increasing unity of the Red Army.

The White Army operated in three main theatres:

Southern front

Main articles: Southern Front of the Russian Civil War and Southern Russia intervention

In the summer of 1919, Denikin's troops captured Kharkiv

Organization of the White Army located in the South started on 15 November 1917, (Old Style) under General Mikhail Alekseyev. In December 1917, General Lavr Kornilov took over the military command of the newly named Volunteer Army until his death in April 1918, after which General Anton Denikin took over, becoming head of the "Armed Forces of the South of Russia" in January 1919.

The Southern Front featured massive-scale operations and posed the most dangerous threat to the Bolshevik Government. At first it depended entirely upon volunteers in Russia proper, mostly the Cossacks, among the first to oppose the Bolshevik Government. On 23 June 1918, the Volunteer Army (8,000–9,000 men) began its so-called Second Kuban Campaign with support from Pyotr Krasnov. By September, the Volunteer Army comprised 30,000 to 35,000 members, thanks to mobilization of the Kuban Cossacks gathered in the North Caucasus. Thus, the Volunteer Army took the name of the Caucasus Volunteer Army. On 23 January 1919, the Volunteer Army under Denikin oversaw the defeat of the 11th Soviet Army and then captured the North Caucasus region. After capturing the Donbas, Tsaritsyn and Kharkiv in June, Denikin's forces launched an attack towards Moscow on 3 July, (N.S.). Plans envisaged 40,000 fighters under the command of General Vladimir May-Mayevsky storming the city.

After General Denikin's attack upon Moscow failed in 1919, the Armed Forces of the South of Russia retreated. On 26 and 27 March 1920, the remnants of the Volunteer Army evacuated from Novorossiysk to the Crimea, where they merged with the army of Pyotr Wrangel.

Eastern (Siberian) front

Main articles: Eastern Front of the Russian Civil War, Siberian intervention, and White movement in Transbaikal

The Eastern Front started in spring 1918 as a secret movement among army officers and right-wing socialist forces. In that front, they launched an attack in collaboration with the Czechoslovak Legions, who were then stranded in Siberia by the Bolshevik Government, who had barred them from leaving Russia, and with the Japanese, who also intervened to help the Whites in the east. Admiral Alexander Kolchak headed the eastern White Army and a provisional Russian government. Despite some significant success in 1919, the Whites were defeated being forced back to Far Eastern Russia, where they continued fighting until October 1922. When the Japanese withdrew, the Soviet army of the Far Eastern Republic retook the territory. The Civil War was officially declared over at this point, although Anatoly Pepelyayev still controlled the Ayano-Maysky District at that time. Pepelyayev's Yakut revolt, which concluded on 16 June 1923, represented the last military action in Russia by a White Army. It ended with the defeat of the final anti-communist enclave in the country, signalling the end of all military hostilities relating to the Russian Civil War.

Northern and Northwestern fronts

Main article: North Russia intervention

Headed by Nikolai Yudenich, Evgeni Miller, and Anatoly Lieven, the White forces in the North demonstrated less co-ordination than General Denikin's Army of Southern Russia. The Northwestern Army allied itself with Estonia, while Lieven's West Russian Volunteer Army sided with the Baltic nobility. Authoritarian support led by Pavel Bermondt-Avalov and Stanisław Bułak-Bałachowicz played a role as well. The most notable operation on this front, Operation White Sword, saw an unsuccessful advance towards the Russian capital of Petrograd in the autumn of 1919.

Post–Civil War

Main article: White émigré

Blagoveshchensky Temple, a Russian Orthodox Church in Harbin

The defeated anti-Bolshevik Russians went into exile, congregating in Belgrade, Berlin, Paris, Harbin, Istanbul, and Shanghai. They established military and cultural networks that lasted through World War II (1939–1945), e.g. the Harbin and Shanghai Russians. Afterward, the White Russians' anti-communist activists established a home base in the United States, to which numerous refugees emigrated.

White propaganda poster

Moreover, in the 1920s and the 1930s the White movement established organisations outside Russia, which were meant to depose the Soviet government with guerrilla warfare, e.g., the Russian All-Military Union, the Brotherhood of Russian Truth, and the National Alliance of Russian Solidarists, a far-right anticommunist organization founded in 1930 by a group of young White emigres in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. Some White émigrés adopted pro-Soviet sympathies and were termed "Soviet patriots". These people formed organizations such as the Mladorossi, the Eurasianists, and the Smenovekhovtsy. A Russian cadet corps was established to prepare the next generation of anti-Communists for the "spring campaign"—a hopeful term denoting a renewed military campaign to reclaim Russia from the Soviet Government. In any event, many cadets volunteered to fight for the Russian Protective Corps during World War II, when a number of White Russians collaborated with Nazi Germany.^[59] The collaborators included some prominent figures of the White movement, like Pyotr Krasnov, the leader of the White Don Cossacks during the civil war.

Emblem used by white émigré volunteers in the Spanish Civil War

After the war, active anti-Soviet combat was almost exclusively continued by the National Alliance of Russian Solidarists. Other organizations either dissolved, or began concentrating exclusively on self-preservation and/or educating the youth. Various youth organizations, such as the Russian Scouts-in-Exteris, promoted providing children with a background in pre-Soviet Russian culture and heritage. Some supported Zog I of Albania during the 1920s and a few independently served with the Nationalists during the Spanish Civil War. White Russians also served alongside the Soviet Red Army during the Soviet invasion of Xinjiang and the Islamic rebellion in Xinjiang in 1937.

Prominent people

Alexander Kolchak decorating his troops in Siberia

The Government of South Russia created by Pyotr Wrangel in Sevastopol, Crimea in April 1920

Sergei Voitsekhovskii (seated center), Major General in the White movement and later Czechoslovak Army general

• Mikhail Alekseyev
• Vladimir Antonov
• Nicholas Savich Bakulin
• Pavel Bermondt-Avalov
• Stanisław Bułak-Bałachowicz
• Anton Denikin
• Mikhail Diterikhs
• Mikhail Drozdovsky
• Alexander Dutov
• Dmitrii Fedotoff-White
• Ivan Ilyin
• Nikolay Iudovich Ivanov
• Alexey Kaledin
• Vladimir Kantakuzen
• Vladimir Kappel
• Alexander Kolchak
• Lavr Kornilov
• Pyotr Krasnov
• Mikhail Kvetsinsky
• Alexander Kutepov
• Anatoly Lieven
• Konstantin Mamontov
• Sergey Markov
• Vladimir May-Mayevsky
• Evgeny Miller
• Najmuddin of Gotzo
• Konstantin Petrovich Nechaev
• Viktor Pokrovsky
• Leonid Punin
• Aleksandr Rodzyanko
• Grigory Semyonov
• Andrei Shkuro
• Roman von Ungern-Sternberg
• Pyotr Nikolayevich Wrangel
• Sergei Wojciechowski
• Nikolai Yudenich
• Boris Annenkov

Related movements

Main article: Pro-independence movements in the Russian Civil War

After the February Revolution, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania declared themselves independent. However, they had a substantial Communist or Russian military presence within their newly proposed independent states at the time. Civil wars followed, wherein the anti-communist side may be referred to as White Armies, e.g. in Finland the White Guard-led, partially conscripted Finnish White Army [fi] (Finnish: Valkoinen Armeija) who fought against Soviet Russia-sponsored Red Guards. However, since they were nationalists, their aims were substantially different from the Russian White Army proper; for instance, Russian White generals never explicitly supported Finnish independence. The defeat of the Russian White Army made the point moot in this dispute. The countries remained independent and governed by non-Communist governments.

See also

• Russian State (1918–1920)
• 1st Infantry Brigade (South Africa)
• Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War
• Basmachi movement
• Czechoslovak Legions
• Estonian War of Independence
• Finnish Civil War
• Grand Orient of Russia's Peoples
• Great Siberian Ice March
• Italian Legione Redenta
• Russian All-Military Union
• Russian diaspora
• Russian nationalism
• Red Terror
• Soviet–Ukrainian War
• White Terror (Russia)
• Ukrainian War of Independence

Notes

1. Mensheviks and SRs made attempts to overthrow the White administrations and create their own such as the "Political Centre" in 1920^[23]
2. Russian: pre–1918 Бѣлое движеніе / post–1918 Белое движение, romanized: Beloye dvizheniye, IPA: [ˈbʲɛləɪ dvʲɪˈʐenʲɪɪ]. The old spelling was retained by the Whites to differentiate from the Reds.
3. Russian: Бѣлые / Белые, romanized: Belyje.
4. Russian: Бѣлая армія / Белая армия, romanized: Belaya armiya.
5. Russian: Бѣлая гвардія / Белая гвардия, romanized: Belaya gvardiya.