Russian Civil War had many interesting peculiarities, in certain ways it was even more complex than current Syrian war. Each of these require a separate article to fully explain.
This time around I will write about differences between two main opponents of this war, Red and White Armies. In many ways these armies were much unlike each other, despite originating from the same country.
Conflict between them showed that an army with high moral, but with next to no military training will best the army with high military training but with next to no morale. Now I will explain how so.
Red Army
Red army was created by Bolsheviks almost from scratch. In many ways it was a very revolutionary not just because of its ideology but also because of its organization, origins and practices.
It begun as armed group of ideological supporters of communism and later grew to include various discontent people from all walks of life. Even former soldiers, who deserted Imperial Russian Army were often willing to join the Reds. On more negative side, many of their soldiers were likely violent criminals before they joined.
Core personnel however were workers of the many manufacturing plants, years of working together as a productive team allowed them to transfer these skills into fighting together as a team.
Red Army heavily relied on various propaganda methods to encourage people to either join or to defect from their many opponents. Communist ideology appealed to poor and downtrodden people. Red Army leaders used that to rally the poor to their cause.
Unlike other armies, Red Army did not have a dedicated officer corp. Instead, soldiers elected their commanders via direct vote. Ranks and uniforms were different as well, they were more utilitarian and meant to display functional role rather than position of status, that traditional officer ranks became associated with.
In many ways Red Army deliberately did things differently from its Imperial predecessor.
This was one of the reasons why soldiers from Imperial and later White Army were willing to defect to Reds: Imperial Army officers were unpopular with common soldiers and Bolsheviks heavily capitalized on that.
Later in 1930s, many of these innovations would be abolished and Red Army would become much closer to former Imperial and especially current Russian one.
In practice it made Red Army very inconsistent with its performance. Inexperienced commanders, who were propelled to command thanks to their charisma could sometimes make tactical mistakes that would cost Reds dearly. On the other hand, it had no shortage of original ideas and could sometimes win with ingenuity. Most importantly however it had good ability to attract rank and fire recruits into its ranks.
White Army
White Army was the original military of Russian Empire. It continuously existed at least since Peter the Great times. It had military academies to train officers, tradition, established command structure, international connections. All that gave them wealth of tactical and strategic knowledge.
All the Imperial officers from Generals to Lieutenants seamlessly transitioned into White Army, complete with all the command structures completely intact. Because of the above, Whites had a head start against the Reds, who had to build their army from ground up.
All of these White Officers detested Bolsheviks and the Red Army, whom they viewed as nothing more than a rag tag group of traitors, deserters and common criminals. They were very motivated to put an end to Bolshevism.
Ideologically they were very traditionalist and conservative. They believed in privileges of the rank and wanted to restore hierarchical order. Many of them wished to restore monarchy as well.
Whites called their Army Volunteer, but unlike Bolsheviks, Whites continued to draft people into Army against their will, just like they used during the Imperial times. Many of these people were not willing to fight for anything at all and made poor soldiers.
This hierarchical ideology made ranking officers very loyal to the cause, the higher the rank the more loyal they were to the White cause. However, at the same time, it made low rank soldiers' discontent and prone to desertion. Because of that White Army constantly suffered from low morale and high desertion among its rank and fire, it was very officer heavy. They hope that having exclusive access to military academy educated officers would be enough to win.
How they Fought
Eventually these armies did clash on the battlefield. Because of differences in their organization, doctrine and approach to war it produced a series of fluctuating outcomes.
White Army offensives would typically begin with a series of quick and easy victories. White officers would outmaneuver peripheral Red Army units and take a lot of provincial towns, advancing as easy as knife through butter. For a time being it would feel that they could not be stopped.
However, the closer White Army would get to the industrial heartland with its large cities, the harder it would get to score victories and continue their advance.
Eventually the Reds would manage to break the White tide, take initiative and push from there on.
Both, initial Denikin's offensive and later Kolchak's offensive, that begun after Reds already crushed Denikin, had this same basic pattern. While one can dismiss Denikin's success to unpreparedness of the Reds, that would not explain why Kolchak would score a number of victories against the Reds who already crushed Denikin.
The reasons for that are that large industrial centers are core bases of Red Army strength. They could recruit most of their soldiers from these places. Peripheral rural towns had little support for Reds and Bolsheviks so they could muster only small Red Army units if any.
However large industrial areas had more Bolshevik supporters. The bigger the city was, the bigger numbers Red Army could muster.
In addition to high support for Bolsheviks, these areas also had weapon manufacturing factories. These two factors combined would let Reds Both man and arm their army.
Final reason is low morale among low rank White Army soldiers. Red could readily capitalize on that. Reds encouraged low rank White Army soldiers to defect to them and were more than willing to let them join Reds right away.
Reds would mount a propaganda campaign, aimed specifically to encourage defection among White ranks. Soldiers who were taken into White army against their will, would be more than willing to defect. With each new town, the Whites took, more and more would desert them, until there would be none left.
In contrast Whites disliked idea of treason in general to even attempt something like this themselves. Also, they had no compelling ideology to attract desertion.
In the end, after several close calls where Whites almost won, Red Army managed to win the civil war.
No comments:
Post a Comment