The battle for Rostov was typical of the fighting that characterized the first twelve months of the war (October 1917 to September 1918). There were no fixed ‘fronts’, as such, since neither side had enough men or channels of supply, and the movement of the fighting was extremely fluid. Large towns could be captured by tiny armies hardly worthy of the name. Most troop movements were by rail, and for this reason these early confrontations have become known as ‘the railway war’. It became a question of loading a handful of men and some machine-guns on to a train and moving off to the next station — which would then be ‘captured’ along with the town. The ‘fighting’ in these battles was often farcical, since many of the rank-and-file soldiers, especially on the Red side, were reluctant to fight at all (many of them had only joined up in order to get an army coat and a daily ration of food). It often happened that the opposing sides would unexpectedly run across each other in a village or some small town and, after a meeting, would agree to retreat rather than engage. The Red soldiers, in particular, would often run away in panic as soon as the first shots were fired; and although the Whites, as ‘volunteers’, had many fewer problems of this sort, there were many occasions when their officers were also forced to use terror against their own troops. On both sides, officers played down the failures of their men, whilst exaggerating their ‘successes’, in their operational reports. As Trotsky once complained, every town was captured, or so it was claimed, ‘after a fierce battle’; while every retreat was ‘only as a result of the onslaught of superior forces’. These absurd aspects of the civil war were best captured by Jaroslav Hašek in his comic novella The Red Commissar. Its Schweikian hero orders his troops to retreat to the left when his lines are broken on the right. He then sends a telegram to headquarters announcing a ‘great victory’ and the encirclement of the Whites.5
The growth of the Volunteer Army was largely due to the charismatic presence of General Kornilov. He and his followers had fled from the open jail at the Bykhov Monastery after Dukhonin had lost control of Stavka to the Bolsheviks in November. Since this ruled out the possibility of bringing down the Bolsheviks from inside Soviet Russia, and indeed put themselves at risk of execution, the Bykhov generals resolved to flee to the Don. Most disguised themselves and travelled by train through Bolshevik Russia. Lukomsky shaved off his beard and spoke in a German accent; Romanovsky masqueraded as an ensign; Markov as a common soldier. Denikin pretended to be a Polish nobleman and travelled third class: it was here that he witnessed for the first time the ‘boundless hatred’ of the common people for ‘everything that was socially or intellectually higher than the crowd’. Proud as ever, Kornilov, however, refused to hide his identity and instead led his loyal Tekinsky Regiment on a forced march through hostile Bolshevik terrain. They were finally stopped and engaged in battle by a Red armoured train. Kornilov’s white horse was shot from underneath him. He managed to escape, and reassembled most of his troops, but they were already too demoralized to go on, and Kornilov, realizing that he could make it only without them, decided to abandon them and complete his journey alone disguised as a peasant. Ironically, he travelled to the Don in a Red Guards’ train.6
Novocherkassk, which Gul’ reached on New Year’s Eve, was a microcosm of the old Russia in exile. St Petersburg on the steppe. The fallen high and mighty thronged its muddy streets. ‘Here were generals, with their stripes and epaulettes, dashing cavalry officers in their colourful tunics, the white kerchiefs of nurses, and the huge Caucasian fur hats of the Turkomen warriors,’ recalled Gul’. Numerous Duma politicians had come to try and direct the White movement: Miliukov, Rodzianko, Struve, Zavoiko, G. N. Trubetskoi, N. N. Lvov, even the SR, Boris Savinkov. Leading intellectuals also made the Don their home, both in the physical and in the spiritual sense. Marina Tsvetaeva, whose husband, Sergei Efron, was one of the first to join the Volunteers, wrote a series of poems, The Swan’s Encampment, from her Moscow garret, in which she idealized the rebels on the Don as the ‘youth and glory’ of Russia:
White Guards: Gordian knot
Of Russian valour.
White Guards: white mushrooms
Of the Russian folksong
White Guards: white stars,
Not to be crossed from the sky.
White guards: black nails
In the ribs of the Antichrist.
‘White Guards’, 27 July 19187
For Tsvetaeva, as for so many of her class and background, the Don represented the last hope of saving Russian civilization. It was, as she expressed it, the ‘last dream of the old world’.
