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As we know, Crimea was transferred from Russia to Ukraine in 1954, under an order from Nikita Khrushchev. It should be noted that this circumstance drew General Larionov’s attention in its day. The unexpected addition to Ukraine made no less of an impression on him than the launch of the trolleybus line. And yet the aged general was not at all inclined to dramatize this circumstance.
‘Russians, do not regret Crimea,’ he announced, sitting on the jetty one May day in 1955.
Public statements were a great rarity for the general and a crowd quickly gathered around him. Flashing his erudition, the general reminded the listeners that Crimea had belonged to the Greeks, Genovese, Tatars, Turks, etcetera, at various times. And though their dominion was fleeting in historical terms, they had all left their own cultural traces here. In touching on Russia’s traces, the general sketched out, in brief energetic strokes, an impressive panorama, from elegant parks and palaces to the lady with the lapdog. His speech concluded with military clarity: ‘As a person who has defended these places, I am telling you: it is impossible to hold your ground here. For anyone. That is characteristic of the peninsula.’
The general knew what he was talking about. He had needed to hold the line in Crimea twice in 1920, in January and November. The events of October and November ended up being the final collapse of the White Movement. He was unable to hold on to Crimea.
Even so, the first defense (which nobody considered possible at the time) in January ended up being successful. It was this defense that held off the Reds’ capture of the peninsula for nearly a year. Researchers assess the situation that took shape toward the beginning of 1920 more or less identically. The decline of the White Movement was becoming more obvious at this time.
‘After all, we’re not going to the fair, we’re coming back from the fair,’ is what General Larionov whispered in his horse’s ear one sunny January morning.
For everyone observing that scene, the general’s words took the form of a small cloud of steam. In the absence of witnesses, it remains a mystery how that phrase could have reached the public domain. There is no denying the multiple references in the historical literature to the trusting, nearly human relationship between the horse and General Larionov, who called the animal my friend and addressed lines specifically to the horse. And yet it would be ridiculous to imagine that the horse could respond to the general in kind, even more so that the horse was chatting right and left about what had been whispered in her ear.
The general, however, addressed the exact same words to a British envoy in November of that same year. The text arrived by telegraph because the general himself was securing his army’s evacuation from Crimea and heading up the last line of defense. Needless to say, in the telegram to the British envoy (it has been preserved) there is not a word about the phrase not being addressed to him alone. Be that as it may, in scholarship—as, for example, in Vitaly Romanchuk’s In Decline—the text in question is quoted with a reference to January. What is more, it is quoted fairly frequently in scholarship, yielding in popularity only to the well-known explanation of the reasons for the Whites’ defeat. This explanation, which the general formulated with disheartening directness, is in the introduction to the reminiscences that Dupont discovered. It reads, ‘A clod of dung, of medium size, began rolling through Russia. It grew with incredible speed due to the adherence of similar material, of which, alas, there turned out to be very much in Russia. We were crushed by that clod.’
And so the situation that had taken shape by January 1920 was anything but simple. The lethal clod depicted so elegantly by the general was rolling through Northern Taurida, which was the threshold to Crimea, and no one envisioned a force capable of impeding it. In fact, the supreme command of the White Army did not intend to defend Crimea. The Whites’ primary forces were retreating and there were battles in those two directions, the Caucasus and Odessa, from where a counterattack was subsequently planned, after respite and regrouping of forces. If events developed favorably, they intended to force the Reds from Crimea with the return of troops that were encircling the peninsula in two streams rushing north. But that was a matter for the future. In January 1920, Crimea was tacitly destined for surrender. The limited forces sent to defend it shattered everyone’s last doubts about that. Everyone’s but General Larionov’s.
As we know, Dupont’s article, ‘Leonidas and His Children’, presents a rigorous enumeration of troops at the general’s disposal during the defense of Crimea. So as not to force the reader to chase down this work, which is generally difficult to find, we will reiterate, in brief, the data cited in the article:
| 13th Infantry Division | 800 bayonets |
| 34th Infantry Division | 1,200 bayonets |
| 1st Caucasus Rifle Regiment | 100 bayonets |
| Slavic Regiment | 100 bayonets |
| Chechen Regiment | 200 sabers |
| Don River Cavalry Brigade | 1,000 sabers |
| Headquarters Convoy Corps | 100 sabers |
The troops enumerated had twenty-four light and eight horse-drawn weapons at their disposal. In the course of organizing the defense, General Larionov also succeeded in procuring six tanks (three heavy and three light) as well as eight armored trains. Despite all the armored trains turning out to be defective, they became a big source of moral support for the son of the railroad department’s director.
For anyone with even the slightest knowledge of military matters, the above enumeration leaves no doubt: the White Army had decided, at the highest level of command, to relinquish Crimea. Only 3,500 fighters were sent to protect the front, which stretched for 400 versts. The general was aware that it was impossible to defend Crimea in Northern Taurida. And so he did not even begin to do so.
Without a doubt, General Larionov was inspired by a brilliant idea from Spartan king Leonidas, who decided to fend off the Persians in a narrow gorge. As we know, Leonidas’s military contingent was extremely limited (a tenth of what General Larionov had at his disposal, not to mention the complete absence of armored trains), but that did not prevent him from fighting in the worthiest manner. This battle was analyzed in depth during tactical lessons at the Second Cadet Corps, where the future general studied back in the day. King Leonidas’s feat made an indelible impression on cadet Larionov.
As life would have it, the general took part in battles that unfolded on emphatically open terrain. These were flood plains, boundless rye fields, or steppes that were parched until they cracked. During World War One, Larionov happened to fight in the mountains for a time, but those mountains turned out to be the Carpathians, which by 1914 had become thoroughly weathered and were not at all suitable with respect to defense. General Larionov mentally thanked fate that it was not the Persians opposing him in these tactically unsuitable circumstances. Only in January 1920 did he sense that his hour had come. Like the renowned Spartan, the Russian general was visited by the abrupt realization that the only chance for a successful defense was to narrow the front. He decided against defending Northern Taurida and moved his troops toward Perekop.