Chapter 21 - The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: South and East, October - December 1919
No mercy for these enemies of the people, the enemies of socialism, the enemies of the working people! War to the death against the rich and their hangers-on, the bourgeois intellectuals; war on the rogues, the idlers and the rowdies!
-
Lenin
By October 1919, the war had slipped into stalemate almost everywhere. Both sides seemed out of breath after the furious battles of the previous months.
Southern front:
After the major offensives and battles of the summer and autumn, the war reverted back to guerilla style operations and raids that had characterized the previous winter. While White and Red cavalry and partisans were harassing supply lines and each other while the big infantry formations spent the next four months sitting around in muddy trenches.
An ever increasing number of soldiers were concentrated around Kharkov. The Red Army alone had more than 150.000 men in the city and the surrounding regions and more reinforcements purred into the sector each day. Generals and soldiers alike knew that the relative calm wouldn't last.
For the moment, the Volunteers and their French allies tried to tighten the semicircle around Kharkov but were very careful to avoid battles. The two bloody defeats at Merefa were still too fresh.
In the meantime, Stalin send his favourite expendables onto new raids: the leaderless Anarchists saddled their horses once more, they were to strike deep into the White hinterland. Their horsemen outflanked Berthelot's French corps, then advanced south along River Sudzina. But unbeknown to the Soviets, an Ukrainian force had been hiding in the forests of Pereiaslav, badly outnumbered and ill-nourished, the Ukrainians stood no chance.
But this unexpected interference ruined Stalin's plan. The element of surprise was lost and the Anarchists arrived a lot more tired at Cherkassy then it had been expected. As a result d'Anselme's mixed force of French and White fared surprisingly well. The Anarchists lost 1.100 men while only inflicting 900 enemy casualties.
Obviously, the Anarchists were under no illusion about keeping Cherkassy. On 1 December 1919, the Black Army abandoned the city and struck north-west. Their next target was a small Volunteer force that had taken the city of Konotop, north of Kiev. This time the surprise worked. The Whites hadn't expected to be attacked from their rear; 40% of their force was killed, the rest fled in complete disorder. Even without leaders the Anarchists had once more proven their worth as one of the most valuable – if ill-treated – combat force of Soviet Russia.
But the regular Red Army units hadn't been completely idle either. Several junior commanders had taken the initiative and dealt small blows against White raiding parties.
On 4 December, Tukhachevsky had left Voronezh unprotected for a few days in order to hunt down Mamontov's Cossacks. He cornered them just east of Kursk and wiped them out. Stalin was furious since Tukhachevsky had blatantly disregarded his orders not to leave Voronezh. One day, he would get even – but for the moment it was hard to argue with success and thus Stalin grudgingly recommended Tukhachevsky for a promotion.[1]
At Tzaritsyn, Kamenev was more open minded towards small counter-attacks. During the last days of 1919, he dispatched several of his subordinates to wipe out White forces that had been harassing the Tambov-Tzaritsyn railway. Yakir reconquered the Volga harbour of Kamyshin where to everyone's surprise a Southern White Volga fleet was sighted.[2] Unfortunately the gunboats escaped before Yakir's men could reach the harbour.
Further west, Kniaginsky cleared out the Cossack hotbed of Mikhailovka from where countless raids had been launched. Three Cossack regiments were annihilated and Kniaginsky gained his second star.[3]
Siberian front:
In the East, Operation Red Flood had run out of steam. Most importantly, the White river blockade was delaying reinforcements on the wrong side of the Volga. In particular it kept Trotzky away from the front. Unwilling to abandon his luxurious railway train, the Bolshevik War Commissar was stuck far away from the front.[4] Moreover, Semenov had scratched together the last Siberian reserves and assembled a fairly powerful corps at Ufa. This railway hub was an excellent defensive position. Rough territory protected its rear and flanks making flanking attempts almost impossible. And Semenov was strong enough to thwart a direct attack by the Red forces available. Thus Parsky and Ghai-Khan had to content themselves with securing the railway lines up to Ufa until fresh reinforcements could arrive.
In the meantime, Red forces cleaned out the rear. The huge Green Volga uprising had fielded 50.000 combatants in its best days. But it had never been under a good star. Frunze had butchered a seizable force early on. After that the rebels had failed to secure a viable source of supplies. In consequence, hunger had taken a horrible toll. By December hardly 10.000 rebels were left when Kork fell upon them with an army of 30.000 Red conscripts. Those who survived the onslaught starved during the next weeks. The Volga rebellion had found an inglorious end.
Further north, Vatzetis started a limited offensive of his own; its objective was the city of Perm. Most Siberian forces had been retreated from the area in order to secure Ufa. All that was left was a single division under Molchanov. Vatzetis swiftly attacked. But even his elite Latvians couldn't outmarch the trains Molchanov's men had boarded.
All Vatzetis had to show for his effort was the destruction of a Siberian mountain infantry regiment. His frustration reached its peak when he found the Kama crossings blocked by White gunboats. Days ago the road to Perm had been wide open but now his target was out of his reach.[5]
Stalin took that botched operation as pretext to get rid of a commander he didn't trust. Like a bucket of dirt, a series of well constructed lies was showered upon Vatzetis.[6] The Latvian was arrested and Stalin had already marked an execution date in his calender. But Trotzky intervened at the last minute and managed to save the general's life. However Vatzetis' reputation had been too thoroughly sullied and he wasn't to return to active command.[7]
Stalin's intervention dealt a crippling blow to Vatzetis' former force. There was only a single general left to command a force of almost 30.000 men. Luckily, Egorov wasn't completely incompetent, he organized half his men into a single, powerful corps and marched north in order to secure the western side of River Kama. The rest of Vatzetis former force waited at Sarapul until some new general could assume command.[8]
Egorov continued his advance slowly but methodically. By December the Kama was frozen and he could finally cross, but at that point Perm was no longer undefended.
South of the Ural the steppes of Central Asia lay wide open. It was here that Zinoviev and the 15.000 men of his Turkestan army had dug in. These were the forgotten heroes of Soviet Russia. Beleaguered since late 1918, these men had been cut off from the rest of the Red Army for more than a year. Supplies were starting to run low but there were still a few fish left in the Aral Sea. What had been a series of brutal battles during the spring and summer of 1919, had calmed down in recent months. But when Orenburg fell to Frunze in October 1919, both sides knew that this was bound to change. Now Martynov shared Zinoviev's predicament: He was trapped in an isolated position without a working supply line. The Siberians had little choice but to try and break through one more time.
It wasn't a hopeless venture, Between them Martynov and Seid-Alim Khan had more than 28.000 fighters. Zinoviev Reds were outnumbered by 2:1. Moreover, the Red troops were of lesser quality, half of them were undisciplined Red Guards. But the Reds had one major advantage, they had had months to tear out the railway tracks around Aralsk. Thus Martynov had to leave his four powerful armoured trains behind when he attacked.
However, Martynov's attack coincided with heavy rain purring down on the desert. Each gorge became a torrential river. The dirt roads were covered in mud. When Martynov arrived at Aralsk on 24 November 1919, his men were already exhausted. Even worse, Seid-Alim Khan's force was nowhere to be seen. Nevertheless the Siberian general chose to attack. His men fought bravely, but the Reds hadn't spend the last year, defending desert rocks only to give up now that help was on its way. The Siberians bombarded the Communist trenches, they charged at them, but nothing helped. Zinoviev's veterans just kept killing Whites. Eventually, Martynov ended this futile exercise and sounded the retreat.
Seid-Alim Khan arrived 6 days later and received just as cold a welcome. Zinoviev's men stopped the White charge in a hail of bullets and even had the audacity to counter-attack the next day. Seid-Alim's expedition ended in a wild flight across the desert. After two days of combat he had lost half his force. In total, Martynov's latest attempt at conquering Aralsk had cost 7.200 White lives as opposed to 3.700 Red fallen.
In the meantime, Frunze had made slow but steady progress south. Aktjubinsk was taken on 23 November. And by the end of the year, he was finally within striking distance of Martynov. 1920 would see an end of the siege of Aralsk, one way or another ...
But at Moscow, Aralsk was already forgotten. Lenin was sitting at his Kremlin desk; his face was pale. In his hands he held a short telegram. The news couldn't have been worse ...
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[1] Finally, I had a first rate two-star general in the South again.
[2] It seems Ian had decided to provide assistance to Durk's attempts at blocking the Volga.
[3] No big successes but small improvements to my situation: less enemy raiders and two newly promoted two-star generals – even if one had abysmal stats – not enough to celebrate but playing the Reds is a grinding game; every small victory brings you one step closer to wearing the Whites down.
[4] I had relied on Trotzky to boost the strategic ratings of my rather weak corps commanders. Ghai-Khan had a rating of 3, Parsky only of 2 (his stats suffer severely if he is promoted). Without Trotzky close-by, both generals were inactive most of the time.
[5] Losing my river fleet kept haunting me in this game. I believe it saved the Siberians from defeat in those last months of 1919.
[6] Unfortunately, this is a lot less absurd than it may sound. In his “confession” during the second Moscow show trial, Karl Radek denounced the supposed sympathizers of his group as “semi-Trotskyites, quarter-Trotskyites, one-eighth-Trotskyites”. One would have thought Stalin's interrogators could have come up with more convincing crimes when they “prepared” their victims for their confessions. The accusation of poisoning the poet Gorky was raised during the Trial against the Twenty-One (which included Bukharin but also the man who as chief of the NKVD had organized the previous show trials, Yagoda). As for the fluoridation of vodka … well, I hope you know your cinema.
[7] There are a few events that remove Red commanders over the course of the game. The victims are always high-ranking and fairly talented. It's pretty much the opposite of a Darwinism, in RUS the fittest perish first.
[8] Which turned out to take time. First the new generals had to get to Sarapul; then the wait for one of them to become active started. A one star doesn't help much unless, you can get him to form a division. All that takes a while with crappy Red 2-0-0 generals.
