THE EASTERN FRONT

THE MURDER OF CZAR NICHOLAS II AND FAMILY –  JULY 1918

THE RUSSIAN CIVIL WAR 1917-1922

     As we have seen, with the outbreak of the Russian Revolution in February 1917, Czar Nicholas II of Russia (refusing to stand down in favour of his son, Alexei) was forced to abdicate – bringing to an end, incidentally, more than three centuries of Romonov rule, and ushering in 74 years of Communist rule and the global conflict it was to bring in its wake.

    At first, during the Spring of 1917, he and his family were allowed to live in the relative comfort of the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoe, not far from Petrograd, but as the civil war took hold, the Provisional Government, fearing for the lives of the royal party, moved them to the governor’s mansion at Tobolsk in distant Siberia. Here they led bearable if somewhat depressing lives, but boredom gave way to fear in the October, when the Bolsheviks eventually seized power. Their concern was not for the safety of the Romonovs, but the need to ensure that they were not captured by invading White forces. As a result, in April 1918 the family was moved to a gloomy mansion in the centre of Ekaterinburg, a city in the eastern foothills of the Ural Mountains (now known as Sverdlovski). Ominously called “The House of Special Purpose”, it had been converted into a prison fortress, defended by a number of machinegun nests, and with armed guards in constant attendance. Their stay here was miserable and painfully short. By the beginning of July it had become clear that Ekaterinburg was going to fall to the Whites in the very near future. Lenin was consulted. He favoured putting the Czar on trial but, given the shortage of time, he gave his approval to the murder of the Czar and his family, …… though he did not commit his decision to paper! He fully realised that if the Whites captured the Czar, this would be a serious blow – and possibly a decisive blow – to the Bolshevik cause.

    The brutalxmurders took place on the night of the 16th July, carried out on the orders of the local Ural Regional Council. In the early hours the family was told that they were leaving the city. After they had been given time to prepare for the journey, they were escorted to a small basement room which had access to the street. There they were joined by four members of their staff, including their doctor and cook. It was at this point that a number of gunmen entered the room and carried out the killings. It should have taken a matter of minutes, but some of the children survived for close on twenty! The Czar and his wife were promptly killed, but the first wild volley of shots quickly filled the small room with dust and black smoke, making it difficult to see more than a few feet ahead. Some of the gunmen then used their bayonets to complete the killings. Only Alexei’s dog, Joy, survived the slaughter.

     The disposal of the bodies proved just as chaotic. After being mutilated, burned and doused with acid, it was found that the abandoned mine pit in which they were to be dumped was too shallow. The next morning, the remains were loaded on a truck and taken to what is now the Ganina Yama Monastery, nine miles outside of Ekaterinburg (built in memory of the Romonovs!). Here the truck got stuck in the mud, however, and only two shallow graves could be dug, one taking the remains of nine bodies and the other – as it turned out – containing the bodies of Alexei and Anastasia. The graves were later discovered, and DNA tests, carried out in 1991 and 2007, proved their authenticity. Eighty years to the date of the massacre, the bodies were reburied in the imperial family vault in St. Peterburg Cathedral.

     Incidentally, for manyxyears it was rumoured that Anastasia, the youngest daughter, had somehow survived the killings. A number of women came forward claiming to be her, one of the most convincing being a Polish factory worker named Anna Anderson. ..…

     ..... Following the abdication of Nicholas II, there was talk of he and his family being invited to settle in England, but his cousin, George V, felt uneasy about welcoming a man whom the British public regarded as a blood-stained tyrant. The invitation was allowed to lapse!

THE RUSSIAN CIVIL WAR 1917 - 1922

     As noted earlier, the Russian Civil War began soon after the October Revolution in 1917, albeit on a small scale. Within the former empire, a number of ethnic groups staged their own uprisings. In January 1918, for example, the Cossacks declared their independence (forming the Republic of the Don), as did the Ukranians, Romanians and Transcaucasians (though their republic collapsed within a month). And come the signing of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty in March, as we have seen, the war between the Whites and the Reds began to gather momentum. The Germans busied themselves taking strategic locations from their former enemy – such as Kiev, Odessa, Sevastopol, Kharkov and Rostov – and the Czechoslovak Legion, stranded in Russia at the end of the war, became one of the first battle units to take on the Red Army, most of the fighting taking place along the Trans-Siberian Railway. It was near the station of Chelyabinsk in May that the Legion defeated a train-load of Hungarian troops making for home, then took on and put to flight a Bolshevik force that was sent to their rescue. And the Legion, some 40,000 strong, was part of the White force that advanced on Ekaterinburg and triggered the murder of Czar Nicolas II and his family, then held captive in the city.

    The war was fought on three main fronts, located in the east, the south, and the northwest of what became the Soviet Union (red arrows and boxes on map), and conducted over three main periods:

From late 1917 and 1918: Mostly small scale action, but spread over a wide area.

January-November 1919: Initially, the White Army winning on all fronts, but then defeated by a reorganised “Red Army” led by Trotsky.

1920-22: The “White Army”, soundly defeated in the Caucasus and Crimea, slowly pulls back.

The Allies and other anti-Bolshevik countries (blue arrows) evacuate their forces.

     In the opening years of this vicious war, the Whites – initially well supported by the Allies with money, men and material – clearly had the upper hand. As we have seen, what was left of Russia following the Brest-Litovsk Treaty was invaded on three broad fronts. In addition, British, French and Italian forces (and later an American contingent) landed at Murmansk and set up a puppet government; Japanese forces invaded Siberia, seized Vladivostok and moved inland; and a number of Russia’s neighbours, including the Baltic States and Poland, fearing the spread of Bolshevism (and seeking new territory!), were quite willing to take part in Russia’s dismemberment. By late 1919, 86% of Russian territory was occupied. Indeed, it was only by Lenin’s astute leadership, and Trotsky’s outstanding work as War Commissar that Russia survived as a huge multinational state. By constantly promising “power to the people” (the down-trodden masses), Lenin retained the support of the much greater part of the population. And those opposed to his political take-over were ruthlessly put down by the army or the Cheka, the secret police …. particularly during the “Red Terror” which followed an attempt on Lenin’s life in August 1918. A firm grip on the population was required if Russia and the Bolsheviks were to survive. In the meantime, following a number of significant setbacks on the battlefield, Trotsky took command of the Red Guard (a volunteer-based unit), and created it into a professional fighting force. By the end of 1919, his Red Army, augmented by the introduction of compulsory conscription in the June, was beginning to turn the war in Russia’s favour, despite having to fight on a number of fronts. The Reds began to grow in strength as the Whites, lacking unity, fell back in disarray. By 1922, after three years of bitter fighting, cruel oppression, widespread disease and constant famine – estimated at an overall cost of 8-10 million military and civilian deaths! – communism took control of a devastated Russia. It was destined to survive until 1991 and, in the meantime, stir unrest and conflict across the globe.

Acknowledgements

Family: The Moscow Times Murder Scene: planetfigure.com Map: en.wikipedia.org Trotski: en.wikipedia. org War Pic: blackwells.co.uk Lenin: deutschlandfunkkuture.de Meteor: nasa.gov Map USSR: revolutionry communist:org Trotski: fineartamerica.com It’s Over: dailymail.co.uk Communism: youtube.com

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    Givenxthe support of the Allies in this civil war, and the sheer weight of the attack upon Russia – struggling to cope in the aftermath of a violent revolution – one could readily have foreseen a victory for the White forces and the confusion and conflict that would follow in its wake. However, apart from the outstanding leadership shown by both Lenin and Trotsky throughout this conflict – men well used to facing and dealing with adversity – the Reds did have certain advantages on the battlefield itself. In full possession of the central, industrial area – the very heart of the country – the Red Army (eventually 500,000 strong), had access to a fairly reliable rail network, enabling them to move troops quickly to trouble spots; had twice the number of fighting men than the Whites were able to produce or spare; and, above all, possessed a good central command structure, enabling troops to be employed at varying strengths wherever the need arose. In contrast, the Whites were made up of a number of diverse adversaries, each with their own objectives; they lacked a coordinated plan of action, confined as they were to the peripheries of a vast battle zone; their troops were tired and war weary; and with no plans for land reform, they attracted little if any support from the local peasants, the majority of the population in the areas of conflict. Indeed, the extreme violence meted out to the peasantry – coupled with the popular feeling that they supported a Czarist restoration – can be seen as the major cause for their failure. In the end, the Bolseviks emerged as the unlikely victors, and Russia’s long-term political future was at last determined.

    Incidentally, as noted earlier, the Czechoslovak Legion played a prominent part in the fight against the Bolsheviks, and won a notable victory at Chelyabinsk on the eastern flank of the Ural Mountains. It was not the city’s only claim to fame! In February 2013 it made headline news when a large fireball, a meteor, entered the earth’s atmosphere at a speed of eleven miles a second and crossed over the town before blowing up at a height of 12 miles. Judged to have been about 65ft in width, and weighing 12,000 tons, it damaged over 7,000 buildings and close on 1,500 people sought medical aid, mainly due to broken glass!

     Lenin became the first and founding head of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in December 1922. It was a successful end to a long and troubled career, but his triumph was short lived. From then on – possibly as a result of the injury he sustained during an attempt on his life four years earlier – he suffered a series of strokes from which he never recovered. He died on the 21st January, 1924. He was a dedicated, determined man, a revolutionary who strove to create a people’s democracy and, in fact, ended up with a despotic, one-party state which was very close to complete economic collapse. And matters became worse when, against Lenin’s wishes, Joseph Stalin was appointed his successor. Then the killing really began. Lenin himself, of course, was well known for his savagery on many occasions. A number of peasant risings were ruthlessly put down in 1920, for example, and in overthrowing the naval mutiny at Krondstadt in March 1921, over 500 seamen were killed and some 4,000 wounded. However, by one means or another, Stalin was to be responsible for the death of millions of his own people!

     Incidentally, several attempts were made upon Lenin’s life, as one might expect, but the most serious occurred on 30th August 1918. It was made by Fanny Kaplan, a member of the anti-Bolshevik faction in the Socialist Revolutionary Party. She fired three shots at close quarters, injuring Lenin in the shoulder and neck, and this, together with the three strokes he was to suffer, clearly hastened his death. Kaplan confessed to the attack and was executed a few days later.     

     The leadingxBolshevik, Leon Trotsky (adopted name of Lev Davidovitch Bronstein), was born in November 1879 in the village of Yanovka in Ukraine, then part of Russia. A devoted Marxist from a teenager, he was arrested and exiled to Serbia, where he joined the Social Democratic Party. After escaping from Siberia, he spent a number of years travelling abroad, and in 1903 came to prominence as a member of the Mensheviks for his theory of “permanent revolution” – the idea that a revolutionary class should never compromise. With the outbreak of the revolution in Petrograd in February 1917, he made his way back to Russia, and it was here that, despite some disagreement with the ideas of Lenin, he joined the Bolsheviks, and played a major part in preparing for and achieving the formation of a Communist government.

     In the civil war that followed, as we have seen, he was made War Commissar, and it was his success in this appointment – building up the Red Army and taking command of it in the field – that he made such a significant contribution to the victory of the Bolsheviks. Not surprisingly, he saw himself as successor to Lenin (seriously ill by the early 1920s), but his somewhat aloof character, his uncompromising attitude, and, probably, his Jewish heritage, made him few close friends. When Lenin died in 1924, Joseph Stalin easily pushed him aside, and he was thrown out of the party three years later. After some years on the move, during which he continued his criticism of Stalin, he settled in Mexico, and it was there, on the orders of his rival, that he was assassinated in August 1940, during the Second World War.

     Incidentally, in the 1930s Trotsky wrote two critical works on the Russian Revolution: The History of the Russian Revolution 1932-33, and The Revolution Betrayed 1937.

    It was at the height of the Russian Civil War that fighting came to an end on the Western Front. As we shall see, a mutiny in the German High Seas Fleet in October 1918 triggered off a series of revolts across Germany; the Kaiser abdicated on the 9th November; and the Armistice of Compiègne, held two days later, brought an end to the First World War on the eleventh hour, of the eleventh day, of the eleventh month. Russia was not explicitly involved in the Versailles Treaty that followed, but the settlement of Europe that emerged from these deliberations was to be of real interest to the new communist government of the Soviet Union!

RCW