Prepared by: Dinmukhammed Zhanatuly
According to textbook of Soviet period (History of Kazak SSR, 1977, volume 4) the Whites were called as "counter-revolutionaries" - the revolution (a word with positive connotations) referring to the Bolshevik Revolution against the Russian tsarist regime.
This terminology reflects Soviet class viewpoint and ideology. It basically consists of enumerations of the Red Army's defense and "liberation" of Kazakhstan from the anti-Bolshevik forces.
Anton Denikin (1872-1947) and Peter Krasnov (1869-1947) formed the anti-Bolshevik Volunteer Army, which wasn't significant threat to Bolshevik 's regime until the summer of 1918, when a large army of Czechprisoners of World War I had been permitted by Kerensky's government to form units to fight the Central Powers.
The plan was to transport the new Czechoslovak Legion by railroad across Siberia to the Pacific Ocean, and then sail them to France. Although the Czech units were in fact friendly to the Bolshevik’s cause, Trotsky decided to halt the rail progress of the Czech army and instead ordered the Czechs to "join the Red Army to be pressed into 'labor battalions' - that is, become part of the Bolshevik compulsory labor force.
Those who disobeyed were to be confined to concentration camps." The Czechoslovak Legion, composed of Czech and Slovak deserters from the Austro-Hungarian army, whom previous Russian governments had allowed to form their own units.
In March 1918 the Bolshevik government agreed to let these units leave Russia by the Far East, but in May violent incidents took place during the evacuation, and on May 29 Leon Trotsky, commissar for war, ordered them to surrender their arms. They refused, defeated attempts of the local soviets to disarm them, and took control of the Trans-Siberian Railroad.
In the vacuum created by this action, two anti-Bolshevik authorities appeared: the West Siberian Commissariat, of predominantly liberal complexion, based at Omsk; and the Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly, composed of Socialist Revolutionaries, based at Samara. The Czechs resisted with force, seizing much of the rail system and emboldening the scattered Russian anti-Communists. With assistance from the Czechs, anti-Bolshevik forces captured Kazan and Samara.
The Czechs resisted with force, seizing much of the rail system and emboldening the scattered Russian anti-Communists. With assistance from the Czechs, anti-Bolshevik forces captured Kazan and Samara.
A conference in Ufa tried to unify anti-Bolshevik forces in Siberia in September, 1917, but within two months one faction had arrested the other and control fell to one Admiral A.Kolchak (1874-1920) - supreme ruler of the counter-revolutionary anti-communist White forces during the Russian Civil War. With this move the Kolchak forces alienated the Czechs and provoked anti-Bolshevik SRs to declare a two-front struggle against Reds and Whites alike.
The White Army — was supported by the Allied forces from countries such as Japan, the United Kingdom, France, Italy and the United States.
The war crimes of the Bolsheviks were numerous, and not nearly as well publicized as those of the Whites. Just as the Whites massacred large numbers of Jews, the Bolsheviks were guilty of the mass extermination of the entire Don Cossack people - killing an estimated 700,000 out of around 1,000,000 of them.
The Red Army showed especial brutality to surrendering Whites and civilians sympathetic to them. Kolchak's armies and associated civilians suffered particularly awful treatment because the Allies made no effort to evacuate these refugees before departing, as they did with the Whites in the Crimea. In the train of the army followed the Cheka, eager to apply more systematic penalties for opposition to the Soviet state.
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