On October 25, 1922, the Red Army entered Vladivostok. Even though the soldiers of comrade Uborevich bore the name of The People’s Revolutionary Army (PRA) of the Far-Eastern Republic (FER), they were actually the combatants of the Red Army. This was corroborated a month later, since already on November 22 the buffer Far-Eastern Republic was included in RSFSR, while PRA transformed into the Fifth Army of RKKA (Red Army of Workers and Peasants).
On October 25, 1922, the last White Army corps left Vladivostok. The troops of Lieutenant General Diterikhs evacuated from Primorye on the ships of the Far-Eastern Fleet bound for the Japanese Sea.
The Civil War that lasted almost 4 years and took away more than 10 million lives came to a close in Russia. Only the Great Patriotic War was more horrible in terms of casualties.
In spite of the declared Eurasian nature, the overwhelming majority of Russians identify themselves as Europeans for a multitude of historic and other reasons. One of them deserves a special mention: most Russians simply reside in the European part of Russia.
However hard we try to persuade ourselves that Russian Asia is our fosterer, that only the inhabitants of Altai will be able to survive a nuclear war, and that the future of our planet is in the incredibly beautiful Russian Far East – all those mantras do not help.
Great things have always happened and will happen here – in Moscow and Saint Petersburg, in Rostov and Nizhny Novgorod, Samara and Saratov. And what is going on beyond the Urals?
There are oil, fish, Yermak the Conqueror, and stunning beauty there, which most Russians have never seen.
Here is the rationale behind this long digression: in recent years the history of the Civil war has been highlighted in a more balanced manner than in Soviet times. Chapaev, Shchors and Kotovsky are no longer at war with featureless and mediocre “shadows of the past.” It turned out that not only father Makhno, but even admiral Kolchak was quite an adequate and interesting personality.
It turned out that not only the White, but the Red too occasionally suffered defeats and that the latter robbed and raped even more than the former, and the Red terror was much more brutal than the White terror.
I’d like to praise particularly the efforts made by many people to restore the Gallipoli Memorial in Turkey that extols the heroism of many thousands of Russian people who left the Crimea in November 1920 with the army of General Vrangel. The word “Gallipoli” is already quite revealing for at least a certain part of Russian citizens. One example would suffice: on November 2-5, St. Petersburg will host events commemorating the ninetieth anniversary of the Russian exodus from Gallipoli and actually the ninetieth anniversary of Russian Dispersion, which began with the disbanding of military camps of the Russian Army in Gallipoli, Chatalji, the Greek island of Lemnos and other places.
Among the organizers of Memorial Days in Saint Petersburg are: the State Hermitage, Yeltsin Presidential Library, The Foundation of Russian Culture, St. Petersburg State University…
And this is good!
The more striking is the unevenness of efforts put by European Russia and Asian Russia (regrettably, there are ample ground for this distinction nowadays) towards the preservation of national historic memory. It would be ridiculous to challenge the fact that the destiny of Fatherland in times of the Civil war depended, above all, on the issue of warfare on European fronts: in the south (the Army of Kornilov – Denikin – Vrangel); in the Volga, Urals and Western Siberia (the Army of Kolchak) and in the west (the Army of Yudenich). But does this really play down the dramatic nature of the events that were happening in the Far East of our Motherland in 1920-1922?
Until now historians have been debating the time of beginning of the Civil war. Some reckon this time from the first hours of organized resistance to Bolsheviks in Moscow in December 1917. Others believe that the Civil War actually commenced on February 23, 1918, when a 3,000-bayonet Voluntary Army of General Kornilov left Rostov and set out for its unprecedented march over the Don and Kuban steppes.
It’s much more difficult to resolve the dispute about the end of the Civil War in Russia. The facts are obvious, however: on October 25, 1922 the last government formation on the territory of former Russian Empire – the Interim Trans-Amur Government – stopped resistance to the Soviet power.
The time has come, when we no longer refer to the US experience on any occasion and this is good too! And yet we should not fall into extremes, according to our age-long habit. Some traditions on the other side of the Pacific are worthy of emulation – first of all, the national Memorial Day celebrated in the USA on the last day of May. On that special day Americans commemorate all their soldiers (more than half a million) who perished on the battlefields of the Civil War in 1861–1865, both “northerners” and “southerners.”
On the eve of October 25, 2011 the local activists of the Communist Party organized a running trip over the battle sites of “the Red guerillas” in Prymorye. In 1997, Russian President Yeltsin signed a decree about the erection of a monument in Moscow to those who fought and perished in the days of the Civil War in Russia. This is about all.
The bloody Civil War which took away the lives of more than 10 million Russian people came to an end on October 25, 1922. Only 89 years have passed since then.
Mikhail Bykov
