The
Northern Caucasus Operation
was fought between the White and Red Armies during the
Russian Civil War
between December 1918 and March 1919. The
White Army
captured the entire Northern Caucasus. The
Red Army
withdrew to
Astrahan
and the
Volga delta
.
Prelude
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]
In summer and autumn 1918, the Red Army had been defeated in the
Second Kuban Campaign
and
Ekaterinodar
,
Novorossiysk
,
Maykop
,
Armavir
and
Stavropol
were lost. Red Army commander
Ivan Sorokin
rebelled against the
Revolutionary Military Council
of the North Caucasus, shot several of its members and fled, but was arrested and shot without trial by a regiment commander of the Taman army.
After the loss of Stavropol on November 15, 1918, the forces of the
Taman Army
and the former Sorokin's army were consolidated into the
11th Red Army
, which held the
Zavetnoye
-Petrovskoye-Remontnoye-
Priyutnoye
-Dry Buivola-Oak-
Kursavka
-Vorovskolesskaya-
Kislovodsk
-
Nalchik
front line, which roughly ran north?south. It was joined by the weak
12th Red Army
which held the front line from
Grozny
over
Kizlyar
to the
Terechnoye station
, which ran west?east. On December 8, 1918, both of these armies became part of a separate
Caspian-Caucasian Front
under command of
Mikhail Svechnikov
. The Front headquarters were located in Astrakhan, which wasn't ideal, as there were 400 km of desert between the front and the headquarters.
The campaign
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On December 19, 1918, the Caspian-Caucasian Front received orders from Moscow to attack. The
11th Army
was to launch an offensive against the
Armavir
-
Tikhoretsk
line held by the White troops of
Denikin
, while the
12th Army
was to attack the
Makhachkala
-
Derbent
line with the support of the
Astrakhan-Caspian Military Flotilla
.
On 2 January 1919, V. Kruze's Eleventh Army attacked
Batalpashinsk
, but the troops of the 11th Army were not able to carry out the assigned tasks, which was poorly planned. On 6 January, Wrangel counterattacked taking
Blagodarny
. The
Taman Army
counter-attacked twice, but were unable to retake the town. The Eleventh Army's 4th division, withdrew partly to
Elista
, and partly to
Yashkul
. When two brigades of the 3rd Infantry Division also withdrew in divergent directions, the White Army was able to transform the initial success of its counterattack into a general defeat of the 11th Army. According to
Peter Kenez
, "From this point on, the disintegration of the E;eventh army was remarkably rapid."
[2]
Kislovodsk
and
Piatigorsk
were taken on January 20,
Grozny
on February 5 and
Vladikavkaz
on February 10.
[1]
The 12th Army was also forced to conduct defensive battles in the districts of
Kizlyar
and west of Guryev. The defeat of the 11th Army made the 12th Army retreated towards the region of Astrakhan.
The Red Army, already badly organized and poorly disciplined, had also been decimated by a typhus epidemic.
[1]
General Avtonomov
was one of its victims.
General Wrangel
was also infected, but survived.
[1]
On February 4, 1919, the
Stavropol Front
was created to defend Astrakhan. In February 1919, the troops of the Front managed to secure Astrakhan and the mouth of the Volga and to prevent the union of Denikin's troops with the Ural white Cossacks. In March, the Caucasian-Caspian Front of the Red Army was disbanded, and the 11th and 12th Armies were consolidated into one, the 11th Army (second formation).
References
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]
- ^
a
b
c
d
Jonathan Smele,
The "Russian" Civil Wars, 1916-1926: Ten Years that Shook the World.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2015; pg. 120.
- ^
Kenez, Peter (2004).
Red Advance, White Defeat: Civil War in South Russia 1919-1920
. Washington, DC: New Academia Publishing. pp. 28?29.
ISBN
9780974493459
.