The White Generals: The White Movement and the Russian Civil War

by Richard Luckett

Very slightest of wear to the dust jacket, pages nice and clean, no writing or highlighting. A very nice copy. All our books are individually inspected, rated and described. Never EX-LIB unless specifically listed as such.

Genres: History, Russia, Military History, Russian History, Nonfiction, 20th Century, War

432 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 1971

Reviews

[A.L. Sowards · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a solid account of the Russian Civil War. Its focus was more on the opposition than on the Bolsheviks, but because so many books are the other way around, I enjoyed that aspect. The writing is readable and the organization chronological by theater. A good choice if you’re interested in the subject.

[Monty Milne · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a subject I find innately fascinating, so of course I enjoyed this excellent book with its fluent and elegant style. The focus, as the title indicates, is White Generals – not Red Generals, or allied interventionists, although both get more than a sideways glance. As for the Reds, they had a brilliant and ruthless logistician in Trotsky, and the advantage of control of the industrial heart of Russia from the start, together with the overwhelming support of the vast majority of the proletariat. Allied intervention was always marginal, as Luckett demonstrates, and for many reasons could never have been decisive (geography, war weariness, public support, etc).

And yet the Whites came close to victory and it could have all turned out so differently. The main reason for their success was that on the whole they had better generals: Wrangel’s victory at Tsaritsyn (later Stalingrad) was spectacular. There are few if any twentieth century battles where both horse cavalry and tanks have been used simultaneously to such good effect. At the end of the battle, a Te Deum was sung in the re-opened cathedral and 10,000 captured military trucks were added to the White inventory.

Also, the best recruiting sergeant for the White cause was to experience a period of Red rule: terror, such as the deliberate massacre of priests and entire social groups, including women and children, was not a by product but a deliberately chosen policy. As were the economic policies such as banning market places and seizing food which inevitably resulted in starvation and suffering on a huge scale. (The Reds would say “You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs”, to which the obvious reply is, “Where’s the omelette?”)

White atrocities are also covered. Not all Jews were Bolsheviks and not all Jews took the opportunity of widespread dislocation to indulge in shameless exploitative profiteering – but many were and many did – and many Jews fell victim to pogroms – mostly carried out by Whites but also sometimes by Reds.

In Finland, Marshal Mannerheim played by the rules of war and did not shoot his Red prisoners, despite many atrocities committed by the Reds against his forces (and civilians). Most (but not all) White generals were opposed to terror but were not always able to keep their soldiers from committing atrocities (shooting prisoners was routine for both sides). But terror against civilians was not deliberate policy for the Whites in the way it was for the Reds.

One of the reasons Mannerheim led the Whites to victory in Finland was his ability to manage logistics and finance. As he said to his backers – “If all goes well, you’ll get your money back, and if it doesn’t, all will be lost in any case.” As Luckett says, “Why such a course was never pursued in Russia is a mystery.”

Luckett was a Fellow of Magdalene College Cambridge, and a friend of mine who studied there in the eighties invited me to a Wine Tasting where I was introduced to him. I found him very genial company: charming, erudite and entertaining. I had no idea he had written this book or what his subject was. When I asked him, he replied “I don’t like to think of myself as bound by narrow subject limits – I’m just a don.” That encapsulated his self deprecating charm. (He died in 2020 aged 74).

[Christopher Saunders · Rating 5 out of 5]

The worst that can be said about The White Generals, Richard Luckett's 1971 study of the failed Russian counterrevolution, is that it reflects the prejudices of its time. Hence his depiction of WWI-era Russia, the Revolution itself and especially the Bolsheviks vacillates between simplistic and caricatured. Fortunately, the balance of his book depicts the White leadership, showing them in layered though unflattering terms. Luckett's perceptive showing the factors that led the Whites to defeat: lack of a unified political vision or command structure, feuds among the Generals themselves, mishandling of Finnish/Polish/Ukranian independence movements who might have made willing allies against Bolshevism, the ambivalence of intervening powers and the Reds' superior resources and leadership. Unlike many Western writers, he doesn't view a White victory as a deliverance forsaken: their reactionary, authoritarian tendencies and erratic personalities (Kolchak and Denikin come under particular criticism here) undercuts any notion of them as heroic freedom fighters. Only Baron Wrangel comes off reasonably well, and he came to prominence far too late to make much of an impact. We wonder less how the Whites failed than that they came so close to victory as they ultimately did.

[Natalie K · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really excellent, pro-White account of the Russian Civil War. Not really intended for the casual reader. Trust me, this book requires a ton of familiarity with Russian and Soviet history. It fills a needed gap in the historiography concerning both the Whites and the Civil War. Oh, and did I mention it's pro-White?! One of the few books I've seen to be so, which is impressive considering it was written in 1971, when the Soviet Union was pumping out anti-White propaganda. Long live the White Movement!

[Nathan Albright · Rating 4 out of 5]

Any time we deal with the past there is the question of the inevitability of the past.  In retrospect, we know that the Reds won and it is clear that they had some advantages that they used to their benefit, such as interior lines and a political agenda that they were able to disguise in order to avoid antagonizing unnecessary enemies until they consolidated power and it scarcely mattered.  What the author does is present the Russian Civil War from the point of view of the Whites, and for those of us have that strong counter-revolutionary inclinations in revolutionary times, it offers some object lessons that can be used in tandem with a study of other revolutions so as to note how it is that counter-revolutions succeed and how it is that they fail.  And the Russian Civil War provides plenty of object lessons into how it is that future anti-Communist forces can do better, as it could have been possible for the Whites to win had they not made some very serious and very (in retrospect and at the time) lamentable mistakes.

This book is almost 400 pages long and is divided into eighteen chapters and organized in a chronological fashion.  The book begins with a preface and discusses the first white general and then discusses the origins of the counter-revolution in 1917 with a look at the Imperial Russian army before 1917 (1), the abdication of the czar (2), the army and its relationship with Karensky's provisional government (3), the Kornilov movement (4), and the headquarters on the Don (5).  After that the author examines the time of troubles in 1918 with a discussion of the campaign through the ice (6), the Finnish victory under Mannerheim (7), the relationship between the Germans, Czechs, Cossacks, and allies (8), the conquest of the Kuban by Deniken (9), the Northern diversion caused by British intervention (10), and the struggle to define the supreme ruler of all the Russians (11).  After that the author discusses 1919 in a seasonal view starting with the view from the center (12), then the spring (13), summer (14), autumn and winter (15).  After that the author discusses the failure of the White army in 1920 with defeat (16), Wrangel's Crimean bastion (17), and the last stand of the whites (18), after which there is a conclusion of the reckoning as well as a bibliography and index.

In reading this particular book it is clear that a lot of mistakes could be learned by future (present) counter-revolutionaries, and it is worth spelling them out.  For one, counter revolutionary efforts need to be united, as they were in Finland and Spain, and not disastrously divided as they were here.  Likewise, it is not worth alienating potential allies by making one's post-revolutionary plans obvious; instead, build a victorious coalition and decide the postwar picture after one has won the civil war in the present.  Likewise, being able to take advantage of external support while not becoming grifters, and making sure to avoid no purposeless violence (although counter-revolutionary terror may be necessary to clean up corrupt populations one has conquered) are vital lessons.  When one is fighting an enemy with interior lines and that has superior numbers, one has to be able to know that one has secure bases that one has established rule in so that one can make gains and use one's advantages to the best benefit.  The White Russians appear to have frittered away their early advantages in discipline and failed to unify or build a solid political program in many areas (except Finland) and found themselves overwhelmed when the Red armies were able to knock them out individually while they were unable to properly coordinate with each other.  That is to be lamented, but also learned from.

[Davy Bennet Surf · Rating 4 out of 5]

Have you read the Bloody White Baron by James Palmer?

Great, but harsh true story of a White leader out East. Mainly in Mongolia. German stock, from Estonia, fought for Russia. Sternberg Ungern.
Interesting stuff on the Dalai Lama, much different take than the Beatles.

I started this one years ago but it seemed dry, so I just skimmed and re-booted.

[Daryl Walsh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a forgotten period of history. The barbarity of civil war Is something hard to imagine. I learned a lot about how the Bolsheviks were really on the right place at the right time. They were not some sort of irresistible mass of humanity. If the transitional government after Brest- Litovsk has possessed any cohesion, the course of history would have been changed.

[James Rooney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Accounts of the White Russian side in the Russian Civil War are, unfortunately in English, few and far between. This book goes a long way towards filling in that gap.

The focus of the book is that the White Movement was by no means very strongly united or very clear in its purpose. The various generals and soldiers were motivated by a shared hostility to Bolshevism, but they were vague in their plans to replace it. Should there be a Russian republic? Should the Tsar be restored? What about the non-Russian peoples of the empire, should they be given their own states, or brought back under Russian rule?

The leaders of the White Movement were unable to definitively answer these and other questions, which goes a long way towards explaining why they failed to mobilise the Russian people to the same extent as the Bolsheviks.

Compounding this difficulty was the fact that the various disparate White leaders were geographically distant and communication between them was poor. To Bolshevik propaganda it seemed that they were surrounded by menacing 'imperialists,' especially once the Allies became involved, but in reality these were all disjointed and feeble movements that the Bolshevik core in West-Central Russia could strike down one by one.

Of particular interest to me was the fate of the Russian Black Sea Fleet and the last remnants of the Whites under Wrangel. The Bolsheviks were able to cut Wrangel's army with a brilliant offensive from the Dnieper to the Sea of Azov, which isolated the Crimea and doomed the last of White Russia's armies.

As a lost cause the Whites were never given much attention in the West, and to fit the needs of Soviet narratives they were greatly exaggerated in their actual strength, and in their supposed treachery and collusion with the Western Powers. This book places the movements and the men who led them in their proper context and gives them their fair due.

[Ted · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book and found it well written, well researched (considering its date of publication, 1971) and quite an exceptional read. The focus of the book is on the events that took place on the five or six different White Army fronts during the Russian Civil War (1917-20) and on the generals who led the White Army forces. The author devotes particular attention to the background, character, leadership style and wartime experiences of the following Generals: Kornilov, Alekseev, Kolchak, Mannerheim, Denikin, Yudenich and Wrangel. Many other prominent political and military figures feature in the work, among them Bolsheviks, Germans, Czechs, Finns, Japanese, English, French and Poles - all of them with their own goals and objectives. The same may be said of the numerous ethnic minorities who allied with one side or the other. This was a very complex, tragic and deadly civil war; one that caused the death of 10 million people. The progress of the war is described chronologically, year by year and front by front. The writing is informative and relatively objective. The author’s sympathies appear to have been with the Whites but he has some positive and many negative things to say about the conduct of the war by both sides. An excellent military narrative and a memorable read! 4+ stars

[Bill V · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is not a bad book. I prefer Red Victory by Bruce Lincoln. This book has some interesting details not covered in the Lincoln book, but as far as I remember, the two books don't differ in any material aspects. I would consider this more of a supplemental title to Red Victory.

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not bad, but I found the writing style to be a little dry.