White army - groups

Question 1

Czech Legion

Answer 1

• 40,000 men
• permission to cross to Vladivostok 26 March
• trains held up by local Soviets, barraged by propaganda
• became suspicious Bols would hand over to Germans
• Chelibianks Soviet arrested some who’d been involved in brawl
• order from Moscow in April for half the Legion to turn around and be evacuated through Arkhangelsk
• legion occupied the town
• Moscow ordered the local Soviets to disarm the Czechs in turn. ‘Every armed Czech found on the railway’, read Trotsky’s telegram of the 25th, ‘is to be shot on the spot.’

Question 2

Armed Forces of Southern Russia (AFSR)

Answer 2

formed 8th January 1919
including Volunteer Army
largest
General Denikin
came within 300 km of Moscow in November 1919
retreat early 1920 at Irkutsk
July 1919 = 120,000

Question 3

Kolchak’s Siberian Forces

Answer 3

formed late December 1917

Komuch

• September 1918 = Provisional All-Russian Govt
• Omsk
• August 1918, workers of Izhevsk rose up against soviet, declared support for Komuch
• SR dominated
• Komuch now controlled an area the size of Italy
  + 14 million peop

Kolchak coup
17 November 1918
He was a passive — almost accidental — figure in the coup. He merely happened to be in the right place at the right time, giving the conspirators a figurehead.
Rightist officers pressured him
couldn’t raise the 250 quorum needed for CA

foreign aid
In the first six months of 1919 his White army received from them: one million rifles; 15,000 machine-guns; 700 field guns; 800 million rounds of ammunition; and clothing and equipment for half a million men.
roughly equivalent to the Soviet production of munitions for the whole of 1919,
30,000 Allied troops defended rear

Question 4

The North Western Army

Answer 4

October 1918
Yudenich
two campaigns against Petrograd May + Nov 1919
14,400 men at peak

Question 5

Foreign interventionists

Answer 5

• British + Commonwealth troops took control Of Archangel and Murmansk in march 1918
• British and French navies supported Denikin in port cities in Black Sea

reasons
Japan = territorial expansion
   70,000 troops in east Siberia
    November 1918
- anti-Bols
- keep control of Allied war materiel stockpiles in Archangel
'strangle Bolshevism at birth' Winston
- Sovnarkmon cancelled foreign loans, nationalised foreign-owned industry