Anti-Communist

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30983, 12 February 1966, Page 5

Anti-Communist

/'Specially written ]or "The Press" by KENNETH ANTHONY.) "VOT often remembered tox day is the large amount of active opposition inside Russia, as well as outside, to the revolution of 1917. Just how close the anti-Bolshevist forces came to success is shown by the stamp illustrated here —issued by General Denikin’s counter-revolution-ary government in south Russia. It is one of a series that came out in 1919 at the time of the general’s greatest advance northwards, and the inscription round the central part of the design reads: “One Russia.” In the unsettled conditions the stamps were produced in

a hurry, and all, except a few of the high values, were issued without perforations. At one stage the general's volunteer army reached within 250 miles of Moscow. Other anti-Bolshevist forces were in the north-east part of the country and in Siberia. If these armies had been able to link up, the Soviet regime would almost certainly have been ousted.

But it was not to be. With such vast distances involved, the opposition could not achieve a unified command, and had no common plan of campaign. As a result Lenin’s government in Moscow was able to deal with its opponents’ armies one at a time. General Denikin’s stamps were used over a wide area of Russia in the summer of 1919. Then Communist pressure forced him back until by the end of the year the region which he controlled was limited to the Crimea. In the following April the general resigned his command and withdrew into exile in Turkey. Towards the end of 1920, the Russian civil war was virtually over, leaving behind a welter of counter-revolution-ary stamps and overprints, some of them of very doubtful validity. In far-off Siberia, the Far Eastern Republic preserved