The Don Civil War was a military action between the Don Cossacks (in alliance with the White movement in Southern Russia) and supporters of Lenin's Council of People's Commissars, primarily in the Don Host Oblast, which took place from November 1917 to the spring of 1920. It was part of the Russian Civil War.
In the Don, as in many other Cossack Oblasts of Russia, there was a historical split between the outlander population and the Cossacks. The fact that the Don became one of the regions where the White Movement began to form its armies is explained primarily by the fact that the Don Oblast received autonomy and self–government at a new level back in the spring of 1917; the Oblast received an elected Ataman and its own governing institutions.
Don Host Oblast
From 1806, the center of the Oblast was the city of Novocherkassk. In 1887, the Taganrog City Administration and Rostov–on–Don Uezd were transferred from the Ekaterinoslav Guberniya to the Oblast.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the Don Oblast included 9 districts:
February – October 1917
The February Revolution of 1917 and the fall of the Russian monarchy marked the end of the sole command of the Don Military Circle and led to a split and polarization of society and government. From the spring of 1917, several structures were formed on the territory of the Don Host Oblast, claiming power:
- Commissars of the Provisional Government (regional and nine district);
- Councils of Workers', Soldiers', Peasants' and Cossacks' Deputies;
- The Don Military Circle (Congress) and its executive bodies: the Military Government and the Don Regional Ataman;
- Local government bodies: city councils and their executive bodies.
In May 1917, the Regional Congress of Peasants decided to abolish private ownership of land, but the Don Military Circle declared the Don Lands to be "the historical property of the Cossacks" and decided to recall the Cossacks from the apparatus of the Provisional Government and from the Soviets. This led to an intensification of rivalry between the two power structures – the Military Government and the Councils of Workers', Soldiers', Peasants' and Cossacks' Deputies.
At the same time, General Kaledin returned to the Don, having been removed from command of the 8th Army for not accepting the February Revolution and refusing to carry out the orders of the Provisional Government regarding democratization in the troops. At the end of May, Kaledin took part in the work of the Don Military Circle and, yielding to the persuasion of the Cossack Community, agreed to be elected as the Military Ataman.
On September 1, 1917, the Provisional Government's Minister of War, Aleksandr Verkhovskiy, ordered the arrest of Kaledin for involvement in the Kornilov's Uprising, but the Military Government refused to carry out the order, and on September 4, Aleksandr Kerenskiy cancelled it on the condition that the Military Government "guaranteed" Kaledin.
On November 2, 1917, the South–Eastern Union of Cossack Troops, Highlanders of the Kavkaz and Free Peoples of the Steppes was established in Vladikavkaz as a state–territorial unit governed on the principles of a confederation. The stated goal of the South–Eastern Union was the fight against "anarcho–Bolshevism" on the territory of the Cossack Troops – members of the Union, mutual support for maintaining order and legality within the Union and bringing Russia to the Constituent Assembly. In its declaration, it proclaimed: "By guaranteeing its members complete independence of their internal life, the Union undertakes to assist them in preparing their internal structure as independent states of the future Russian Democratic Federal Republic". After the proclamation of Soviet Power on the Don, Kuban, and Terek (January–March 1918), the South–Eastern Union ceased to exist.
November – December 1917
Socio–political situation
In the first months after the October Revolution, the anti–Bolshevik forces did not have significant social support, so their attempts to organize resistance to Soviet Power in the Cossack Regions were comparatively weak.
The situation on the Don during this period was extremely contradictory. The main cities were dominated by an "outsiders" population, alien to the indigenous population of the Don both in their composition, lifestyle, and political sentiments. Here, especially in Rostov and Taganrog, socialist parties dominated, distrusting the Cossack authorities. The Mensheviks were numerically dominant in all the councils of the Don Oblast, the central bureaus of trade unions and in many Soviets, and even if they gave way to the Socialist Revolutionaries somewhere, they still occupied leadership positions. The working population of the Taganrog District supported the Bolsheviks. In the northern part of the Taganrog District there were coal mines and pits of the southern protrusion of the Donets Basin. Rostov became the center of protest by outlanders against "Cossack dominance". Local Bolshevik leaders could count on the support of soldiers from the reserve regiment stationed in the city. The Don moderate Social Democrats, as well as those in the center, were not united in their assessment of the Petrograd Uprising and its consequences. The Chairman of the Novocherkassk Menshevik Committee, Aleksandr Samokhin, expressing the general opinion of the Don Menshevik Defenders, said that he considered it impossible to participate in the Soviets that had taken a hostile position towards the Constituent Assembly. At the same time, the Bolsheviks of the Rostov–Nakhichevan Council of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies created the Military Revolutionary Committee.
The city councils of the oblast, in which the Mensheviks had taken strong positions, launched anti–Bolshevik propaganda. The resolution adopted by the Novocherkassk Duma on the proposal of the socialist bloc indicated that the Bolshevik Action on the eve of the convocation of the Constituent Assembly was an attempt to replace the voice of the entire people with the voice of individual groups, a betrayal of the cause of democracy. At an emergency meeting of the Nakhichevan Duma, the Council and the city's trade unions on November 9, the Petrograd Uprising was assessed as "a form of political adventurism", expressing concern that, under the banner of the fight against the Bolsheviks, opponents of democracy would undoubtedly become more active. The leaders of the local Mensheviks – the Chairman of the Rostov Duma Boris Vasilev, who in the pre–October period had in practice implemented the idea of an agreement with the Kaledin Government, and Pyotr Petrenko, the Chairman of the Rostov–Nakhichevan Council of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies and at the same time the Chairman of the Public Committee (which united the Rostov–Nakhichevan Council of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies and the bourgeois Civil Committee) – in the October Days of 1917 considered the possibility of joint actions with the Military Government against the establishment of the Bolshevik Regime. At the same time, both understood that following the defeat of the Bolshevik organizations, the same fate could await the Menshevik organizations. At the same time, moderate Social Democrats did not want to support Soviet Power, since they continued to consider the transition to socialism in Russia premature. Therefore, the Mensheviks called on their organizations to play the role of a "third force" to which both Bolshevism and the Constitutional Democratic – Kaledin Dictatorship were alien. They considered the expression of such a "third force" to be "a national regional governing body, which would include representatives of the entire population of the Don". In other words, the Mensheviks sought to resolve the confrontation between the Ataman Government and the Bolsheviks by peaceful means, addressing appeals to the population and, first and foremost, to the Military Ataman. At the same time, the idea of an agreement with the Military Government was not popular among the left wing of the Menshevik Party – the Menshevik Internationalists, who considered it necessary to simultaneously participate in both the Bolshevik Soviets and the committees for the defense of the Constituent Assembly, not trusting the authority of the Circle, and some even demanded unification with the Bolsheviks to fight Kaledin.
Actions of the Military Government
On November 7, 1917, Ataman Aleksey Kaledin issued the following appeal: "In view of the Bolsheviks' actions to attempt to overthrow the Provisional Government... the Military Government, considering such a seizure of power by the Bolsheviks to be criminal,... will provide... full support... to the Provisional Government... The Military Government has temporarily, until the restoration of the Provisional Government's authority and order in Russia,... assumed full executive state power in the Don Oblast".
On November 8, while in Rostov the Council attempted to take power into its own hands, Kaledin from Novocherkassk introduced martial law in the coal mining region of the oblast, sending Cossacks there, and established contacts with the Cossack Leadership of Orenburg, Kuban, Astrakhan, and Terek.
On November 9, Kaledin telegraphed an invitation to the Provisional Government and members of the Provisional Council of the Russian Republic to Novocherkassk to organize the fight against the Bolsheviks.
On November 10, the Military Government liquidated the Makeevka Council, a number of mine Councils, and arrested delegates, among whom were not only Bolsheviks, but also Mensheviks. On November 13, delegates from the Don were arrested while returning from the Second Congress of Soviets.
On November 15, Kaledin issued an order to introduce martial law throughout the Don Oblast. Military units were stationed in all industrial centres. General Nazarov and his Cossack Company settled in Taganrog, and General Pototskiy in Rostov. The Soviets were liquidated, workers' organizations were closed, their activists were fired from their jobs and, together with their families, were expelled outside the oblast. Delegations of Donets Miners sought protection in Petrograd and Kiev. The politicians of the Central Rada, who considered the Don Government as a potential partner in the future federation, tried to reason with it through negotiations and persuasion, which did not help much. The epicenter of tension was the largest city in the oblast, Rostov.
At the conference of the Don Committee of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party held on November 16, chaired by the Menshevik Zavarzin, it was noted that the introduction of martial law by the authorities of the Military Circle could, in the current situation, lead to the emergence of hotbeds of civil strife in the south of Russia. At the same time, the delegates agreed with Boris Vasilev that the party "must with all determination distance itself from any ideological closeness with Bolshevism and recognize only technical agreements with them".
Beginning of the activities of the Alekseevskaya Organization
On November 15, General Mikhail Alekseev arrived in Novocherkassk from Petrograd and immediately turned to Kaledin for help in creating volunteer formations to fight the Bolsheviks. Kaledin, however, refused his request to "give shelter to the Russian officers", citing the fact that the Cossack front–line soldiers were tired of the war and hated the "old regime", and therefore the Don Regiments returning from the front did not want to defend the Don Oblast from the Bolsheviks and were going home. Kaledin asked Alekseev "not to stay in Novocherkassk for more than a week" and to move the formation of volunteer forces outside the oblast. Despite the cold reception, Alekseev immediately began to take practical steps. Already on November 15, he published an appeal to officers, calling on them to "save the Motherland".
Neutrality of the Cossacks in relation to the Soviet Power
The Military Ataman was unable to rouse the front–line Cossacks to fight against the Bolshevik Government: the Cossack Units, returning from the front, went home, since the Cossacks, tired of the war, did not want to fight the Bolsheviks, who had stopped military operations against Germany and sent the army home. Many regiments surrendered their weapons without resistance at the demand of small Red Detachments that stood as barriers on the railway tracks leading to the Don Oblast.