This was a big war—or rather, it was a huge compendium of small and medium-sized wars—and consequently, this is a big book. Like all other volumes in the War series, though, it covers its subject very systematically. It begins with a list of acronyms and abbreviations, so that readers can follow the key institutional and organizational players, which were often not generally known by their full names (and in some cases are known better by their Russian titles and especially acronyms—a form regarded as revolutionary at the time and much favored by the Soviet government). The chronology that follows is more essential than ever in this volume, since it is extremely hard to keep track of so many different phases and locations of these diverse conflicts without knowing what happened where and when across the huge expanse of the former Russian Empire. Subsequently, the author’s introduction does a masterly job of bringing it all together, explaining the importance of the work, outlining the general tide of events and decisive encounters, and then weighing up just who won or lost the most, as well as seeking to establish that the conflicts under discussion began earlier and lasted longer than is normally supposed. But there is no doubt that the core of the book is the dictionary, with substantial entries on many hundreds of persons who played a significant role, on every side, as well as hundreds more entries covering the major political and military institutions and organizations of all the contending sides. Key events and campaigns of the wars are also included, as well as many reflective aspects of the subject (including, for example, the “Russian” Civil Wars’ portrayal in film and literature). Still, big as this book may be, there is much more that can be learned about the “Russian” Civil Wars, and the substantial bibliography, therefore directs readers to the best sources in a range of languages.
The writing of this huge book was clearly a labor of love on the part of the author, but even now he would admit that his work is not complete, for completeness might require something several times larger. Nevertheless, this is a most extraordinary work, obviously built on the author’s lifetime of research and study of his subject and his ruminations upon it. Some of that is related to teaching: Jonathan D. Smele is senior lecturer in modern European history at Queen Mary, University of London, where he has taught since 1992, following spells at the Universities of Edinburgh and Aberdeen. In addition, he was for a decade the sole editor of the chief academic journal on his subject, Revolutionary Russia. Hardly the least of his previous achievements is that he has written or edited several major works on the Russian revolutions and civil wars, including a comprehensive annotated bibliography on the subject and a seminal monograph. Consequently, this Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916–1926 is the ideal place to seek both a broad and up-to-date view of an exceptionally complex series of overlapping conflicts and a very focused view of everything related to them.
Jon Woronoff
Series Editor
Acknowledgments
I first extend my thanks to three of the finest historians of the Russian revolutions and civil wars: Evan Mawdsley, Geoffrey Swain, and Jimmy White, all of the University of Glasgow. Each of them offered—vitally early—advice and assistance on this project, to its undoubted benefit. Of course, I accept responsibility for any errors—and in a book of this nature they are likely to be legion. I owe a great debt also to the series editor of this volume, Jon Woronoff, whose infinite patience I have taxed and tested all too often over the past decade. I am grateful also to my home department, at Queen Mary, University of London, for providing the sabbatical leave that allowed me to spend a year at home in Glasgow, just a few minutes’ walk from the magnificent collections on Russian and Soviet history of the university library.
Reader’s Note
At midnight on 31 January 1918, the new Soviet government, which had already laid claim to sovereign control of most of the old Russian Empire, adopted the Gregorian (“new style”) calendar, which had prevailed farther west in Europe since its adoption by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582 and which, in the early 20th century, was 13 days ahead of the Julian (“old style”) calendar, which until that date had been in use in Orthodox Russia (where the church authorities anathematized the new calendar as a Catholic fallacy). The day following 31 January 1918, consequently (and to the consternation of many Orthodox souls), became 14 February 1918. In these volumes, dates of events in areas of what had been the Russian Empire prior to the change in the calendar are given in the old style. Dates of events in Russia after the change of calendar are given in the new style, although it should be noted that many of the Russian military, political, cultural, and of course religious forces that opposed the Soviet regime during and after the “Russian” Civil Wars refused to recognize this revolutionary and heretical breach with the past and continued to use the Julian calendar throughout—and beyond—the civil-war period (just as they long refused to accept the Soviet government’s reform of the Russian alphabet and thus for some decades persisted with the old Cyrillic orthography). Dates of events outside the Russian Empire are given always according to the Gregorian calendar, although the mutable nature of borders in this turbulent era will certainly have introduced some inconsistencies and errors.
In these volumes, all Russian words (including names) have been transliterated according to the Library of Congress (LoC) system, except for Anglicized versions of personal names that gained general acceptance prior to the widespread adoption of the LoC system of transliteration, often as a consequence of their bearer’s domestication or publication in the West (chiefly, for example, for our purposes, “Trotsky” not “Trotskii,” “Kerensky” not “Kerenskii,” and “Wrangel’ not “Vrangel′”). But early 20th-century Russia was a multinational empire—indeed, it was the multinational empire of the modern era. Consequently, of the figures who came to prominence in it, many were not Russian at all, even if they sided with ostensibly “Russian” political and/or military formations. In this regard, it might be worth mentioning that even the bearers of the names most familiar to those with only a passing acquaintance with the “Russian” Civil Wars had a very heterogeneous mix of forebears: thus, on the side of the Reds, we find V. I. Lenin (who had Tatar, German, and Jewish ancestors), L. D. Trotsky (a Jew), J. V. Stalin (a Georgian), and commander-in-chief of the Red Army Jukums Vācietis (a Latvian); on the White side we find A. I. Denikin (half Polish), P. N. Wrangel (of German and Swedish heritage), L. D. Kornilov (a Cossack), and A. V. Kolchak (descended, through his father’s line, from a Bosnian/Turkish family). In deference to this, the personal names of non-Russians have been rendered, for the most part, according to the most common transliteration of their names from Latvian, Ukrainian, Polish, etc., rather than from the Russian/Russified version; therefore, for example, the aforementioned “Vācietis” not “Vatsetis,” and “Dzierżyński” not “Dzerzhinskii.” This, at least, has the advantage of conveying the multinational (even international) nature of the wars that wracked “Russia” in the revolutionary era, even if it is not in line with what the subjects themselves might have preferred. Probably most would have preferred it, but perhaps not most of those on the left: many non-Russian Bolsheviks and socialists of the old empire welcomed—and indeed invited—their Russification (or, as they perceived it, “internationalization”) as releasing them from parochial concerns, while German was chosen as the lingua franca of what we have learned to call the “Russian-dominated” Communist International (the Komintern). It is worth remembering here as well that there were also many Red enthusiasts of Esperanto—N. V. Krylenko, for one.