What is the White Army

Siberia during the Russian Civil War could be a season onto itself, but for the purpose of this episode, we’re going to quickly summarize events. If you want to know more, I highly recommend the Great War Series on YouTube and the History of the Great War on Spotify or iTunes. I’d also recommend Jonathan D. Smele’s book the “Russian Civil Wars” 1916-1926 which I relied on when writing this episode.

First, who made up the White Movement in Siberia? The answer: it’s complicated. It’s the Russian Civil War, of course it’s complicated.

The White Movement is a large nomenclature meant to capture all anti-Bolshevik forces. Its biggest weakness was that it didn’t have a united cadre of leaders, beliefs, or goals. So, unlike the Bolsheviks who are communists and anti-imperialist and anti-monarchy and anti-war and pro-self-determination and pro-worker rights, etc. the White Movement’s position is unclear beyond the fact that they despise the Bolsheviks and many of them are monarchists or at least go-back-to-normalist where normal is a Tsarist Russia (didn’t matter that there was no longer a Tsar or that a Tsarist system unwilling to change was what brought about the revolution in the first place).

Many members of the White movement were Tsarist politicians and generals but also included non-Bolshevik socialists, republicans, middle-class citizens, conservatives, etc. They are a reactionary movement, making it clear who they are against but not necessarily what they are for and resistant to the reality that the war and the revolution changed everything and there is no going back to “before.” They have the support of the Allies who also desire a stable Russia that will-at best return to the world war and at least NOT ally with Germany or spread discord and Communism in Allied states.

Situation In Siberia Early 1918

In 1918, Siberia is a lightning rod for all anti-Bolshevik forces. In January 1918, the Siberian Socialist Revolutionary Party overthrew the Bolshevik government and created the Provisional Government of Autonomous Siberia (PGAS) headquartered in Omsk and organized an anti-Bolshevik rebellion in Siberia. Then in May 1918, the Czech Legion became the Bolshevik’s worst nightmare.

The Czech or Czechoslovak legion was a volunteer army consisting of mostly Czechs and Slovaks who fought alongside the Allied powers with the goal of winning independence for their territories from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. When the war ended in Russia, the Czech Legion wanted to travel to the western front to continue their fight and convince the Allies that their cause was worth supporting. In February 1918, the Legion got permission from the Bolsheviks in Ukraine to travel to Vladivostok port, where transport vessels would take them back to Western Europe. When they entered Russia proper, they were met with Bolshevik suspicions that they would reinforce the White Movement. The legion in turn grew suspicious that the Bolsheviks were trying to convert their members to Communist and slow them down to support the Central Powers.

By May they were slowly traveling down the Trans-Siberian Railway, but were delayed by bad rail conditions, a shortage of locomotives, and the need to negotiate with every new Soviet entity they encountered. On May 14^th, a dispute at Chelyabinsk station between the Legion and Magyar POWs being returned west caused Trotsky to demand disarmament and arrest of the legion. The Legion, instead of disarming, demanded permission to travel unmolested to Vladivostok. Instead, they fought the Bolshevik forces at several points along the railway eventually controlling the railroad from Samara to Irkutsk.

The Czech legion was supported by the Komuch’s People’s Army, one of the many White armies thrown together in 1918. Together they would take Kazan in August, not only capturing Imperial Russia’s Gold Reserve but also opening up the road to Moscow for a coordinated attack. By September they controlled all large cities within Siberia, prompting the Bolsheviks to murder Tsar Nicholas II and his family before they fell into Czech hands. They even managed to take Vladivostok port and greeted the Allied forces sent to rescue them.

Situation in Siberia

The taking of the Trans-Siberian railroad by the Czech Legion was the first domino to fall within Siberia, unleashing a collapse of Bolshevik power and the rise of anti-Bolshevik, Siberian regionalism. From June to August a series of new governments were created, the most important being the Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly as known as the Komuch, in Samara and the Provisional Siberian Government (PSG) which resurrected and transformed into the Provisional Government of Autonomous Siberia.

However, Siberia also drew nationalist and imperialist forces such as the Kadets and the Siberian White Army. The Kadets were a Russian political party that the Alash Orda used to ally with before the Russian Revolution. They were a centrist, statist, and nationalist party and the Siberian regionalists feared that they would sacrifice Siberian interests for their all-Russian Nationalist cause. The Siberian White Army was cobbled together out of the remains of the Imperial Russian Army’s West Siberian Military District and including Siberian Cossacks, who were some of the White Movement’s most loyal soldiers.

Additionally, the Komuch and the PSG did not trust each other and were deadly rivals, but Allied threats forced them to convene in Ufa in September 1918 and created a coalition regime known as the Ufa Directory. The Directory was a bandage over the schisms that cut through the Siberian governments and forces as they disagreed on goals, values, and each other’s counter-revolutionary credentials. Additionally, everyone was feeling the pressure of a Red Army advancing into the Volga in September 1918. The Directory relocated to Omsk (the capital of the PSG and the Siberian Army) which angered the Komuch members of the Directory, but made sense given the Soviet advance on the Urals.

Enter the Alash Orda

The Alash Orda entered this complicated situation in May 1918 after breaking off negotiations with the Bolsheviks. They first approached the Ural White Cossacks led by Ataman Dutov and they agreed to resist the Bolsheviks together. The Alash Orda were already raising a military and by the summer of 1918, the Alash Orda created the first Kazakh cavalry regiment. Dutov accepted this regiment within the Ural Separate Army. This was a White Army and consisted primarily of Ural Cossacks. Dutov would help create two more cavalry regiments and share munitions and uniforms with the Kazakhs.

While fighting alongside the Cossacks, the Alash Orda were one of the first to recognize the independent Siberian government and tried to find common ground with the Siberian regionalists. The Alash Orda proposed mutual assistance agreements and stressed the importance of coordinating their efforts and being indivisible as a movement. They went through the various Siberian governments, arguing that they should respect each other’s autonomy while fighting together. The Komuch temporarily recognized their autonomy but used that recognition to cut the Alash Orda out of discussions around how the various military departments were to be organized and vital questions about supplies and food.

This was a setback but did not prevent the Alash Orda from contributing to the war effort via several more cavalry regiments and an infantry battalion. These units were deployed along with the White Siberian Army and the Komuch People’s army, mostly in the Ural and Torgai regions. It is said that after the Whites took Semirech’e, Bokeikhanov and a 500 Kazakh cavalry detachment rode in with a white banner of the Alash Orda.

The Alash Orda opened a military cadet school later that summer. The Alash Orda president, Bokeikhanov bragged to Bashir nationalist and friend, Akhmet-Zaki Validov that:

“The Semirechye oblast is cleansed of the Bolsheviks. The Kazakhs, Cossacks and offers are finishing off the remnants of the Bolshevik troops. Our (Kazakh) brigades were sent into the Altay guberniya”

S. Akkuly, About the Creation of the Alash State Army, pg. 35

Once again the Alash Orda’s negotiations with the Siberian regionalists grounded to a halt because of a difference in priorities. According to historian V. I. Shishkin,

“… for the leaders of the Siberian counter-revolution, as well as for their military-political opponents – the Bolsheviks, the national question during the civil war in Russia was not the main one. The main one was the question of state power, while the national question was of secondary importance. The leaders of the Alash-Orda understood the correlation of these fundamental problems fundamentally differently, for whom the issue of national autonomy, which was also interpreted as state self-reliance (independence), was always a priority, and for the solution of which they were ready to cooperate with various political forces in Russia, including even those on different sides of the fronts of the civil war”

V. I. Shishkin, Relationship of Alash-Orda and Provisional Siberian government, pg. 116

If the Alash Orda were having similar difficulties with the Whites, why did they contribute to their war with the Bolsheviks? It seems to come down to three things:

1. The White movement was being injected with Russians they knew and had worked with in the past, such as the Kadets, so they may have felt more comfortable negotiating with them than the Bolsheviks.
2. The White Movement, for all its hemming and hawing surrounding Kazakh Autonomy, gave what arms they could to Kazakh soldiers and let them fight alongside their own troops, seemingly recognizing them as equals.
3. In the summer of 1918, the Whites seemed far superior and stronger than the Bolsheviks in Siberia and it would be stupid to join the “losing” side.
   • Additionally, the Whites were full of former Tsarist officials and military leaders and for the Alash Orda, who were struggling to form a state of their own, the White’s seemingly unlimited experience in governance must have been attractive.

Bolshevik Resurgence

While the Alash Orda were raising an army and trying to find common ground with their White allies, the Bolsheviks were returning with a vengeance. The Czech Legion and the loss of Siberia scared Trotsky. He spent months not only recreating an effective Russian Army capable of defeating the White Army but created an effective recruitment apparatus that would serve the Bolsheviks well (whereas the Whites would struggle with finding new recruits as the war progressed). He responded to the White’s good luck in June and July by transferring up to 30,000 soldiers to the eastern front, increasing the eastern armies to 103,000 men (Jonathan D. Smele, The “Russian” Civil Wars: 1916-1916, pg. 108). The Volga Military Flotilla consisting of many ships from the former Baltic Fleet carrying machine guns and heavy artillery pieces joined the eastern armies. They launched a new campaign in August, taking Kazan on August 10^th, Simbirsk on August 12, and Samara on October 7^th. The retreating Komuch forces destroyed the major rail bridges across the Volga, leaving only the rail crossing at Kazan as the Red Army’s only viable route further east.

The Kolchak Coup

With the Red Army approaching, the Kadets, Cossacks, and leaders of the Siberian Army launched a coup and overthrew the Ufa Directory on November 17th. The coup named Admiral Alexander Kolchak as military dictator of the White forces. He promised to destroy all traces of Bolshevism in Russian, restore order, and re-establish a united Russian while prioritizing the needs of the army. He declared the end of all autonomous states, including the Alash Orda, and drove out anyone who didn’t accept his leadership or his vision for the future of Russia. Most military forces accepted Kolchak’s authorities and he inherited a 40,000-man Siberian Army and a region that was threatened by the Red Army, but had not yet ready to succumb to their efforts. In fact, the Whites defeated the Red forces at Izhevsk and Votkinsk in November and they secured a large victory at Perm, where they accepted the surrender of the 3^rd Red Army on December 25^th. Not even the fall of Ufa on December 29^th to Red forces could dent the White Army’s belief that 1919 would be the year they annihilated Bolshevism and returned to a Russia of their dreams.

The Alash Orda, however, were not as confident and they entered 1919 once more searching for an ally.

References

Making Uzbekistan: Nation, Empire, and Revolution in the Early USSR by Adeeb Khalid

Central Asia: A New History from the Imperial Conquests to the Present by Adeeb Khalid

Kazakh Autonomy and Russia: The History of the Alash Movement by Dina A. Amanzholova

The “Russian” Civil Wars: 1916-1916 by Jonathan D. Smele

“The History of the Alash Party in the Context of the Impact on the Processes of Constitutional Acts” by Alima Auanasova, Erkesh Nurpeisov, Kamilla Auanassova, Ganizhamal Kushenova, and Nurlan Mukhlissov

Relationship of Alash-Orda and Provisional Siberian government. By VI Shishkin

About the Creation of the Alash State Army by S. Akkuly

Caught Between Nationalism and Socialism the Kazakh Alash Orda Movement in Continuity by Yunus Emre Gurbuz