The battle near Chelyabinsk, which began 100 years ago, on July 17, 1919, between the armies of the Red Eastern Front and the troops of Admiral Alexander Kolchak, ended in the failure of the White armies to seize the initiative and consolidate their position in part of the Ural region. The defeat of the 3rd Army demonstrated the military and political weakness of the White government in the east of Russia, its inability to build a state apparatus that would satisfy the basic needs of the population for order and justice, and to respond to the challenges of the time. The defeat morally broke the White army and its rear, which ultimately led to the final defeat of the Whites in the east of Russia in the winter of 1919–1920.

In the summer of 1919, the White armies suffered a series of serious setbacks in the Volga region and the Urals. Reinforcements did not compensate for combat losses and losses from disease during the spring and summer operations. The shortage of ammunition and uniforms was aggravated by poor management, lack of coordination, and rivalry between individual military leaders.

The Western and Siberian armies of the Whites, under pressure from the Eastern Front troops reinforced by reserves from the center and from other directions, lost from May to mid-July almost all the territory captured during the spring offensive, and the most important industrial centers: Perm, Izhevsk, Zlatoust and Yekaterinburg, where large military factories were located.

White Lebedev vs. Red Lebedev

The Red command, including the former general and future Chief of Staff of the Red Army Pavel Lebedev, who temporarily commanded the front, sought to completely occupy the important industrial and agricultural region and push the enemy back to Siberia in order to obtain Siberian grain before winter and avoid simultaneous fighting on the Eastern and Southern Fronts, where the offensive of General Anton Denikin’s armies was unfolding.

However, the situation did not yet look hopeless for the Whites. Kolchak's headquarters in Omsk hoped to hold on to part of the Urals in order to preserve an advantageous defensive line and a base for further formations. Moreover, young generals from Kolchak's entourage, led by the chief of staff of the headquarters, General Dmitry Lebedev (who ended World War I with the rank of lieutenant colonel), assured the admiral, who was ignorant of land warfare, that the Reds were exhausted and an energetic counterattack could reverse the unsuccessful course of the campaign.

The plans of both sides had a tinge of adventure. Mikhail Tukhachevsky, commander of the Red 5th Army, directed the main attack on Chelyabinsk, but did not pay due attention to securing the flanks. The operation developed by Lebedev and the commander of the White 3rd Army, General Konstantin Sakharov, was reminiscent of the Battle of Cannae in the Second Punic War: the Whites intended to lure the central group of the Reds advancing on Chelyabinsk into a deep pocket, and then encircle it and destroy it with attacks from the flanks.

Lebedev's plan looked beautiful, but did not take into account the peculiarities of the mountainous terrain, full of lakes and forests, which made large-scale maneuvers difficult, and especially the morale and combat training of the White Army units.

The composition and morale of Kolchak's men left much to be desired / Wikipedia

The sides had very limited forces: the 5th Army had only about 18,500 bayonets and sabres, 440 machine guns and 60 guns against approximately the same amount of manpower, 470 machine guns and 86 guns of the 3rd Army of the Whites. The Whites hoped for reserves: the 13th and 8th divisions pulled to the rear and Kolchak's strategic reserve - three Siberian divisions. However, Lebedev and Sakharov greatly exaggerated their combat capabilities: the 8th Ufa and 13th Kazan divisions suffered significant losses, many soldiers did not want to fight, one of the regiments of the Kazan division went over to the Reds. The failures in the battles were aggravated by Sakharov's management methods. "The new army commander, his chief of staff <...> having become the head of the military administration, began not only to lead, but also to teach, urge and even inspire, etc., often completely ignoring the particularities of the situation," complained General Pavel Petrov, a participant in the Civil War from June 1918. This caused discontent among the front-line soldiers, who had become unaccustomed to formal discipline. The reserve Siberian divisions were sufficiently staffed with people, but their combat effectiveness left much to be desired. General Aleksey Budberg, the head of Kolchak's Ministry of War, wrote in his memoirs: "It must be said quite frankly that these regiments, marching excellently on a ceremonial march, are nothing but combat trash for battle; in 1.5-2 months they will be quite decent combat units and the lever by which it will be possible to turn the entire situation at the front in our favor."

The low combat capability of the Whites was explained by several factors: unlike the Reds, they were afraid to call up military-trained participants in the First World War – they, in the opinion of some of the generals and bureaucracy, were infected with the revolutionary spirit of disobedience. Moreover, captured Red Army soldiers, after a superficial check, often joined the ranks of the Whites, constituting an unreliable element of the troops inclined to go over to the enemy’s side. Training young recruits required time and demanding, qualified officers who were at the same time attentive to the needs of the soldiers. The Whites experienced an acute shortage of both time and personnel.

Problems of the White Rear

In addition, the mood of the Siberian and East Ural peasants mobilized into the White Army was influenced by the events of 1918-1919. Unlike the residents of central Russia and the Volga region, Siberians did not know serfdom and were distinguished by greater self-respect. With rare exceptions, they did not have time to become familiar with the Bolshevik practice of confiscating food and poor peasant committees, but many had a full taste of the tyranny of the local White authorities and field commanders. District and volost chiefs, commanders of small units, feeling their own impunity, took food, livestock, property from the peasants, flogged the "hillbillies", causing anger among local residents, which often developed into mass uprisings led by local intellectuals - agronomists, teachers, etc., sometimes with combat experience of the First World War. The actions of Siberian partisans, especially along the railways, made it difficult to supply the White armies.

The weakness of the lower level of government was aggravated by its lack of rights in relations with the military authorities and punitive detachments sent to suppress unrest. Even timid attempts to stop tyranny caused outrages by commanders. One of the figures in the Omsk government, Georgy Gins, described a tragicomic episode: the village elder posted an order from Kolchak prohibiting taking anything from peasants without payment. The commander of the detachment quartered in the village tore down the order and ordered that the elder be flogged "for disrespect for the authorities."

“Forgetting that the war was being waged on Russian soil and with Russian people, the military leaders, using their exclusive rights, subjected the population to unbearable hardships <...> in one Shadrinsk district, about 5,000 horses and carts were taken from the peasants - and we will understand that no one “Bolsheviked”, but all the peasants cursed the government, which caused them so many disasters,” Gins noted.

It is not surprising that the Siberian peasants mobilized into the ranks of the Whites did not become the reliable soldiers they had been on the front lines of the First World War.

Swing on the battlefield

On July 17, units of the 26th Red Division went on the offensive, encircled Miass from the north, forced the regiments of Vladimir Kappel's Volga Corps to retreat, and moved south of Chelyabinsk. The Whites moved two reserve regiments to the threatened direction, which slowed the advance of the Red units.

In addition, the 5th Rifle Division of the neighboring 3rd Army, which had been transferred to the 5th Army, surrounded the Whites' flank from the north. On July 24, the advance units of the 27th Rifle Division of the Red Army broke into Chelyabinsk, which became the catalyst for an uprising of city workers. Street fighting in the city continued for two days, and the Whites finally left the city only by the evening of July 25.

However, the relatively slow advance of the Reds, the absence of Army Commander Tukhachevsky, who had left for the Eastern Front headquarters, and the weak intelligence activity created a critical situation. The White command concentrated two groups on the flanks of the 5th Army, intending to deliver a strong counterattack. Dmitry Lebedev managed to insist on sending unprepared reserves to the front and using them for the offensive.

On July 25–26, the northern strike group of the Whites under the command of General Sergei Voitsekovsky (the 8th Kama and 13th Siberian divisions and the Izhevsk brigade) went on the offensive and advanced 15–20 km, cutting off the railway to Yekaterinburg and deeply encircling the central group of the Reds that had occupied Chelyabinsk; units of the 35th division and one of the brigades of the 27th suffered a serious defeat. At the same time, Kappel's corps, located south of Chelyabinsk, began active operations, and General Vladimir Kosmin's group, which had retreated east of Chelyabinsk, launched a counterattack.

The Reds found themselves in a critical situation, but the Whites, in turn, underestimated the danger posed to the northern strike group by the Red 5th Rifle Division on its right flank. The decisive factors that influenced the outcome of the battle were the Red command's better understanding of the situation, the ability to take risks and use local resources, and, finally, the higher morale of the Red units.

The commander of the 27th Division, Aleksandr Pavlov, without waiting for the return of the army commander, held a meeting with the division commander of the neighboring 26th Division, Genrikh Eikhe, where the commanders decided to cover themselves with a screen from the inactive Volga Corps and mobilize the city workers to defend Chelyabinsk, and concentrate their main forces against Voitsekovsky's group. In addition, Tukhachevsky, who had returned from the front headquarters, ensured that another division of the 3rd Red Army, the 21st Rifle, attacked from the flank, going to Voitsekovsky's rear.

In a situation where both the Whites and the Reds were threatened with encirclement, the Red command and rank-and-file soldiers had stronger nerves: the White regiments, due to their usual fear of the enemy in the enemy's rear or their unwillingness to fight, began to retreat, and the overwhelming majority of soldiers of the 13th Siberian Division, on which many hopes were pinned, went over to the Reds. Under the threat of encirclement, General Voitsehovsky was forced to begin a retreat on August 3. Other units also retreated to the east. An attempt by Kolchak's headquarters to seize the initiative and retake Chelyabinsk failed. The Whites lost about 4,500 killed and wounded and about 8,000 captured, while the Reds lost 2,900 killed and wounded and 900 missing.

After this, the White armies were finally pushed back to Siberia and almost lost the chance to influence the situation on other fronts of the Civil War. In addition, the Whites used up reserves that could have been useful to them in the future. Attempts at new mobilizations to restore the combat capability of the units led to a new series of uprisings in Kolchak's rear. Less than half a year passed, and in January 1920, Kolchak was captured by the Reds and was soon shot, which symbolized the collapse of the White Army in the east.

The author is a historian

Kolchak's defeat in Chelyabinsk