WHITES AND REDS

Evening Star, Issue 20510, 14 June 1930, Page 20

WHITES AND REDS

THE FINAL BATTLE H WHY THE SOVIETS WON ERROR OF TACTICS. As the streams, of Wood shed in the Russian civil wars of 1918-20 drift further and further into the past we have an interesting number of books bearing on this tragic chapter of the Russian revolution# Most of the ■ Red leaders have spoken on the subject; the number- of documents and reminiscences published by them in Moscow is enormous. writes Alexander Nnzaroff, in the ‘New York, Tunes.’ Of:the White leaders not all are alive to-day; on the battlefields of the Northern Caucasus and of Siberia they paid for their ideas with their own lives more often than their. Red opponents. Yet those of them who are alive have spoken. General A. Denikin wrote (and with remarkable literary talent) five volumes of memoirs. To these many of his lientenants have added their share. Moreover, there even occurred a posthumous apparition; some years ago the Soviet Government published a volume of ‘ Testimonies of Admiral Kolchak,’ testimonies which, when captured in 1920 by the Bolshevists and knowing that .lie would be shot, he gave to the Red tribunal with a dignity and calmness which impressed even his .judges. Thus the former participants of the struggle continue to clarify with words an issue which they long since fought out with bullets, accumulating piles of valuable material, most of which unfortunately remains untranslated. In this documentary literature the memoirs of the late General Baron P. N. Wrangel (he died about two years ago) hold of right a place of foremost importance. He was in every sense of the .word one of the best representatives'of the. White movement; the role which he played in it was great; what he has to say has high interest. THE MAD DECISION. His 1 Memoirs ’ embrace a wide span of events, if not of time. The author’s arrival, after the rise of the Bolshevists to power in the Northern Caucasus, where, under General Denikin’s leadership, a little force of Russian patriots took the seemingly mad decision to fight the Soviet Government controlling all Russia; the almost miraculous growth, victories, and advance of this army, toward Moscow, and the role which, as a commander of its right Sank, the author played in it; its sudden and complete collapse; finally General Wrangel’a election to the post of the anti-Bolshevist Coramander-in-Chief m the place of Denikih, his bafflingly tenacious,: desperate, ton months’ long struggle in the tiny peninsula of the Crimea against infinitely superior Red forces, and his exodus at the head of 130,000 White refugees to Constanti-nople-such, in brief, is the story told in this book. During the first of these two years, while commanding General Denikin’s cavalry divisions, he spent numberless nights on the battlefields in dirt and cold, under rain, snow, and bullets; missed by a hair’s breadth falling into the hands of the Red army, and then lay between life and death, in the throes of typhus. But such per-, sonaj things are mentioned only in passing with great reserve. These pages mix With others throwing interesting light on the political aspect of the struggle, on the half-hearted help which the Allies gave to the Whites, and which is usually described as “ the Allied intervention in Russia.” General Wrangel was not a talented writer. His factual, businesslike narrative is plain ! and often monotonous; yet the very substance of the story be tells is replete with highly dramatic human interest. This, indeed, is a substantial book. WHY DID THEY FAIL? While reading one naturally asks one’s self the much-asked question: Why did General Denikin’s army crumble down at a moment when Moscow seemed to be within its, reach? Be-; cause the Whites were ‘ Monarchists and reactionaries” abhorred by thq people! Such on answer would appear to be a mere piece of propaganda coined, in Moscow, First of fill, together with hundreds, of White-i»nd Sometimes even Red witnesses, General

Wrangel reminds us of the fact that during General Denikin’s advance the peasants, exasperated by Soviet requisitions and abuses, received the Whites as liberators with mad cheers. Moreover, the programme of the Whites, far from being “ reactionary,” was practically the programme of any modern democracy—a fact which is too often overlooked.

The answer supplied by General Wrangel is more complicated and more convincing. To begin with, Denikin was ruined by a fatally wrong strategic plan which he adopted. Having ordered a “march on Moscow,” Denikin scattered his forces on an enormous .front ■spreading from east to west across Southern Russia, As this front advanced it became thinner and -thinner; and finally the Red command mustered a strong group which broke it, thereby .necessitating a general White retreat. • ’ It must be noted that these accusations launched by General Wrangel against: his former chief arq not a gratuitous post-factum criticism. Since the very beginning of the operation he fully realised its absurdity. In telegrams from the front he constantly warned tho Commander-m-Chief, tried to persuade, him to abandon the “ Moscow plan,” and to direct instead the army along the Volga, so as to join Admiral Kolchak’s forces, and fuse 'ith them in one powerful White block. But Denikin remained adamant until General WrangeTs predictions camo true. DISORDER COMES.

The disorder, which meanwhile grew apace in the rear of the Whites, is also ascribed by our author, at least to a certain extent, to this strategical mistake. During tho march on Moscow the territory of this rear increased with such speed that General Denikin was unable to set up any sort of organisation in it; it administered itself >by the laws of chaos. Still worse, he was unable to organise the supply of his scattered armies with food and ammunition. Soldiers and officers fighting on the front were either to starve, or to “ requisition ’’—that is to say, to plunder as did the Reds Thus people who only recently met the j Whites as liberators now rose against) them in revolt; whole regiments of “ Greens ’’—that ,is to say, of peasants fighting the Reds and the Whites alike —gathered in the countryside Under such conditions, General Wrangel concludes, the rebuff at the front natur-, ally transformed itself into a grave defeat, and the retreat—into a debacle. Crushed and depressed, tho noble, unselfish Denikin, who had been afi ex-1 eellent commander of an army corps in the World War, and who proved to be so helpless in handling the turmoil of revolutionary conditions, more and more lost control of the situation. Equally interesting is the second part i of General Wrangel’s book which deals ' with his rule, as the new White Com-mander-in-Chief, in tho Crimea. In a sense, it is oven more dramatic. , General Wrangel also failed; but he 1 did not fail .through his fault. If i Denikin and Kolchak had a very strong j chance to win, General Wrangel had ( none; at the moment when he came to power the White cause was lost beyond retrieval. The fact that he did agree to assume the command at the request of the Council of Generals, was a gesture of great nobility on his part. Ho fully realised that he was facing an “ inevitable defeat ’’; hut he believed that ho had no moral right to abandon his comrades at such a moment. i REORGANISATION | Yet, having assumed the leadership, he achieved a remarkable degree of success. The 'fact that he succeeded in reorganising tho pitiful simitters of Denikin’s forces, composed of handfuls of lousy, over-tired, demoralised, hungry men into an excellently disciplined army (under him plunder quickly ceased); , that with this array he succeeded for ten months not only to fight back the Soviet troops, but also to win important victories; that he introduced within his little territory the agrarian law establishing the full ownershin by peasants of the land which they had taken from 'andlords (Denikin also considered such a law. but for endless months it was being worked out in a special commission,'’ and never became a reality) —all that proved that, unlike Denikin and Kolchak, General Wrangel was the, rich! man in the right place, f With his mind quickly and clearly ■■" rasping the political realities, with his 'firm hand and instinctive talent for ruling. he was obviously made of that stuff Of which dictators are made: and, no doubt, be would have been a real ■White-,dictator ,; yet, unfortunately for the White causei'he, was a White dictator who came too late.