Russian Civil War bibliography

[Cat Lord]

The second tome of the "Mattéo" series of BD is about the Russian Revolution. The author is Gibrat; he always have interesting stories and his drawing is just wonderful.



Bought it yesterday, didn't have the time to read it yet.

Cat

[Kev_uk]

I recommend reading Victor Serges Year one of the Russian Revolution

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Year-Russian-Revolution-Paul-Foot/dp/0745306594/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1289216350&sr=8-4

This man was present at the time of the start of the Civil War, and he writes about 'what actually happened' as he witnessed it. Interesting reading and gives a strong feel about the suffering endured during the conflict.

[Alexor]

Definitely MUST read is the classic "White guard" from Bulgakov, about some young "White" Russian officers stuck in Kiev during the Civil War between the different Ukrainian factions and the Reds. You'll find the book in any language. Bulgakov somehow luckily survived all the Stalinist purges.

On the Red side another classic is "Red Cavalry" from Isaac Babel that almost got him shot at the time (beside him being an enthusiastic communist) because of the honest description of the legendary brutality of Budyonny's corps. Babel died in the Gulag later on anyway...

On the White side, also great but in French (maybe translated?) is "Les Armées Blanches" from Marina Grey (the daughter of Anton Denikin). An amazing account of the "Ice Campaign" where the White Movement started from nothing in The Don and Kuban regions with only a few "Officers regiments" (regiment composed only of officers).
She died last year after having received the Russian passport from Putin, her father's body was brought back to Russia to be buried with honors.

[Alexor]

Very amazing also is the famous trilogy "From Double Eagle To the Red Flag" written by the Don Cossacks Ataman Pyotr Krasnov.
It presents a vast panorama of the Revolution and the Civil War throughout the country. Events are revealed through the fates of many characters from all sides.
Krasnov was hanged in the caves of the Lubyanka right after the Second World War after having been handed over by the British Army to the NKVD after he sided with Germany.

[Rasputin's Own Bear]

Denikin's "Russian Turmoil. Memoirs: Military, Social & Political" is an absolute must read.
The diaries of baron Budberg, military minister in Kolchak's government are also very interesting and show the true scale of a tragedy that RCW was. Don't know if the book is translated, though.

[malthaussen]

Two further possibilities not already mentioned are:

The Volunteer Army and the Allied Intervention in South Russia, 1917-1921 by George A. Brinkley (ALCS E-Book, 2008). This volume is available at Amazon for a hefty price, but can also be picked up used for about ten USD. The Amazon page allows you to read the first few pages to see if it sounds good to you. It claims to be a study of politics and diplomacy, so it may be thin on the military side (I haven't read it myself, yet).

Fighting the Bolsheviks: The Russian War Memoirs of PFC Donald E. Carey, US Army by Donald E. Carey (Presidio, 1997). This also has a page at Amazon, where you can find used copies for around ten bucks. Private Carey's memoirs are both interesting and dull: dull, because they really are a faithful depiction of the day-to-day life of a soldier at the Front, which is pretty boring; interesting for the same reason, and for casting a light on the exploits of the Polar Bears in Archangel. The book also has some unique photographs. Private Carey was fortunate enough to be a member of Company E of the 339th, which never seemed to be in the right place for combat: there is only one firefight in which the author participates, although there are descriptions of other units's actions. One warning: Carey is a bit of a bigot, and his repeated put-downs of everything not American can become quite tedious if one is not American, or even if (in my case) he is American. Fortunately, they are not too frequent, and themselves cast an interesting light on the attitudes of educated Midwestern Americans in the early part of the last century.

-- Mal

[Василеостровск]

One warning: Carey is a bit of a bigot, and his repeated put-downs of everything not American can become quite tedious if one is not American, or even if (in my case) he is American. Fortunately, they are not too frequent, and themselves cast an interesting light on the attitudes of educated Midwestern Americans in the early part of the last century.

Sounds like more of a reality of the world and the reality of a soldier in a foreign country, even today more than anything.

[RICCO7859]

Here you have (In english) : The French army and intervention in Southern Russia, 1918-1919

http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/cmr_0008-0160_1981_num_22_1_1903

[RICCO7859]

About greek army oob, pictures, maps:

http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/showthread.php?131887-The-Greek-Army-in-Russia-1919

[lycortas]

I guess i am kinda surprised that W. Bruce Lincoln's 'Red Victory' has not been mentioned. It is the 3rd book in a series about Russia between 1914-1922. The book is quite readable on its own, and is a standard in American college courses on the Civil War.

Mike

[Rasputin's Own Bear]

I just found what seems to be a small collection of russian sources on the topic.

http://books.google.com/books?id=B_DMm33oTt8C&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

It's too short and brief for my taste, but as far as I figured most of the books quoted there were never translated into English, so, it's kind of unique.
I'd especially note Sergei Mamontov diaries. He was an officer of 2nd Horse Artillery battery, came through the whole RCW, was only 20 in 1918.

Edit: I mean first two chapters, of course.

[jack54]

Hi all,

I was hoping someone could help me choose between

The Russian Civil War by Evan Mawdsley
or
'Red Victory' by W. Bruce Lincoln

Red Victory seems to get better reviews (at least on Amazon) but is one better than the other covering the military actions?

thanks!

[Krot]

Greetings.

Here is the link for a free download of rather informative document REPORT OF THE BRITISH MILITARY MISSION, SOUTH RUSSIA 8th OCTOBER 1919.
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documentsonline/details-result.asp?queryType=1&resultcount=1&Edoc_Id=8051087

As you can see from its table of contents the report covers many interesting aspects of Russian Civil War viewed from British perspective.

I.— Preamble
II.— Chief Factors governing Situation in July
III.— Failure of Russian Administrative Services
IV.— Aids-Memoire for General Denikin
V.— Attitude of supply Services
VI.— Conference of Administrative Services
VII.— Scheme for Issue of British Military Material
VIII.— Working of New System
IX.— Good Relations with Russian Staffs
X.— Issues of British War Material
XI.— Prospects of Improvement in Russian Supply Services
XII. — Faults of Russian Artillery Training
XIII—System adopted for Artillery Instruction, Liaison aud Equipment
XIV.—Increase in Artillery Liaison Officers
XV.—Artillery Equipment Section
XVI.— Guns
XVII.— Artillery Ammunition
XVIII.— Equipment of and Training in Machine Guns
XIX.— Rifles and Small-Arms
XX.— Aviation
XXI. — 47th Squadron
XXII. – Tanks
XXIII. — Naval- The Caspian Sea
XXIV.—The Volga Flotilia
XXV.- The Black Sea
XXVI. — Naval Guns and Stores
XXVII. —Naval Section of
XXVIII. — Expansion of Front and Decentralization
XXIX.— Liaison Group System
XXX.— Morale of Armed Forces
XXXI.— Attitude of Population of Re-Occupied Districts and Mobilization
XXXII.— Economic Situation – Generall
XXXIII.— Economic Competition
XXXIV. - Obstacles to Trade
XXXV.— Oil Fields
XXXVI.— Agriculture
XXXVII. — Livestock
XXXVIII. — Coal
XXXIX. – Relief
XL. — Work of Economic Section
XLI.— Requirements
XLII.— Railways
XLIII. — Exchange
XLIV. — Warning to General Denikin
XLV. — The Cossack Conference
XLVI. — Azerbaijan
XLVII. — Georgia
XLVIII. — Daghestan
XLIX.- Batum
L. — The Ukraina
LI.— Rumanian Support of Petliura
LII. - Bessarabia
LIII. — The Galicians
LIV. — Poland
LV.— German Political and commercial Efforts
LVI. - The Jewish Question
LVII. — Bolshevik Morale
LVIII. — Economic Situation in Sovdepia
LIX.— Pressure of Bolshevik Troops from Siberian Front
LX.—Release of Troops from other Fronts
LXI.—Bolshevik Objective in Asia
LXII. – The Outlook
LXIII.—Duties and Organisation of Mission

Appendix A. – Draft War Establishment
Appendix B. - Rules and Notes for Guidance of British Military Mission to South Russia
Appendix C. – G.1098 (Artillery)
Appendix D. – State of British Military Mission.

[Jorje Vidrio]

Has anyone read any of these titles?

http://www.amazon.com/White-Terror-Cossack-Warlords-Trans-Siberian/dp/0415571340/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1305506654&sr=8-3

http://www.amazon.com/White-Against-Red-General-Denikin/dp/0393336328/ref=pd_sim_b_4

http://www.amazon.com/Armies-Russia-Chronicle-Counter-Revolution-Intervention/dp/1847349765/ref=pd_sim_b_2

http://www.amazon.com/Civil-War-Siberia-Anti-Bolshevik-Government/dp/0521029074/ref=pd_sim_b_5

Would any of these be worthwhile to read?

[ERISS]

Has anyone read any of these titles?
Would any of these be worthwhile to read?

They seem, but I didn't read any. However I read some Denikin writings and from other writers about him. The book about Denikin seem the least interesting as it seems not telling how Denikin could be an uterlly political idiot, and then a very bad military leader (Wrangel tried to correct him in vain). So that Denikin own officers tried to kill him (they killed some of Denikin other supporter officers instead, when Wrangel, more coherent in his politics and by far better strategic military leader, at last could take the lead).

[Nikel]

This reference in the public domain may be interesting

Russian gazetteer and guide, being an account of the territorial divisions and a description of over 300 of the principal towns and cities of Russia, Finland and Siberia ([1919]) by WH Beable


http://www.archive.org/details/russiangazetteer00beabiala


Example of one of the descritions

TSARITZIN.

Tsaritzin, a town of 100,000 population, on the banks of the
Volga, about 320 miles from its mouth. A large gun factory was
established here in 1914 by Messrs. Vickers, and is known as the
Russian Artillery Works Co. In addition there is a large foundry,
the Ural-Volga, and large petroleum tanks. Tsaritzin also does
a large trade in timber, fish and grain.
Hotels: Luc, Stolitchraya and Nationalaya.

[andatiep]

Voilà une nouvelle BD qui vient de sortir et qui se laissera bien lire sur le sujet des tchèques en Russie en 18 :

Svoboda : Prague-Tcheliabinsk
de Kris, Jean-Denis Pendanx, Isabelle Merlet

http://www.amazon.fr/Svoboda-Prague-Tcheliabinsk-Kris/dp/2754804250/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1312123417&sr=8-1


Sorry for non French-speaker, i doubt this commic is yet translated

[Athens]

I would commend Battle magazine n°5

http://www.battlesmagazine.com/eshop/index.php

Written by French in English, it contains both a boardgame about Yudenich's effort against Petrograd and 2 indepth articles about Balts uring Civil War, Freikorps, and Yudenich's attempt, worth reading. No naked girl though.

Currently reading:

Jonathan D.SMELE, Civil War in Siberia( 747 pages)
Geoge STEWART, The White Armies of Russia (430 pages)
Ilya SOMIN, Stillborn Crusade (220 pages).

[Baris]

I was interested only Sultan Galiev - "a forgotten precursor. Socialism and the National Question" headline in the website. Maxime Rodinson mainly a marxist and orientalists. But hard to judge for me his ideas are subjecive/objective about bashkirs/tatars question in the RCW and the also about website.

http://www.europe-solidaire.org/spip.php?article3638

There are some comments or facts I have found highly interesting. But I think 'Mir Seyyit Sultan Galiyev' highly missing in the game. As he organized some offensives against Kolchak. And a great propagandist close relations with Lenin and Stalin . It should be noted that Tatars and Bakshir movements somehow not like each other. Bashkirs and tatars did have some conflicts.

[AshTray]

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_White_Guard
2. The Road To Calvary (also known as Ordeal: A Trilogy) by Aleksey Tolstoy

[The Lev]

Wrote an essay on the RCW recently, and aside from the books mentioned (and a fair few Ukrainian sources, but they aren't readily available)

J. Kenez wrote two books "The War in South Russia", covering 1917-1918 and 1919-1921 respectively-plenty of military stuff there
also
Richard Luckett "The White Generals" is good, offering several insights on the segments of the war which normally are overlooked by the rest, like the part of the Kuban and Orenburg cossacks to mention but two

[Jagger2013]

How does Under the North Star compare to Sholokhov's Don series? Even in English, Sholokhov's descriptive writting is amonst the best I have ever read.

[le Anders]

Did somebody mention Nikolai Ostrovsky's "How the Steel Was Tempered" already?
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/860566.How_the_Steel_Was_Tempered

Also filmed at least twice,
[video=youtube;dYa4-v0-Zyw]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYa4-v0-Zyw[/video]

[Gtvasy]

Look for Denikin's "The Russian Turmoil" ( if I translated correctly), very moderate for a white general and precise.

[ERISS]

I often refer to this Trotsky writings, mainly this excerpt [that I edited a little to be more readable], when I say that he saw the stalinism in leninism, 31 years after Bakunin already did saw it in marxism:

Leon Trotsky
Our Political Tasks
(1904)
[ It was only after the revolution of February 1917
that Trotsky joined the Bolshevik Party
and said this past position was wrong. ]

PART II [on IV parts] :
TACTICAL TASKS
The content of our activity in the proletariat


[ Last chapter of Part II : ]
TO WORK THEN!

LONG LIVE THE SELF-ACTIVITY OF THE PROLETARIAT!

DOWN WITH POLITICAL SUBSTITUTIONALISM!

[ … End of this chapter : ]
(…) in so far as we have to deal with a more complex task – transforming [the most elementary political “instincts” of the masses] into conscious aspirations of a working class which is determining itself politically – we tend to resort to the short-cuts and over-simplifications of “thinking-for-others” and “substitutionism”.

In the internal politics of the Party these methods lead, as we shall see below, to the Party organization “substituting” itself for the Party, the Central Committee substituting itself for the Party organization, and finally the dictator substituting himself for the Central Committee; on the other hand, this leads the committees to supply an “orientation” – and to change it – while “the people keep silent”; in “external” politics these methods are manifested in attempts to bring pressure to bear on other social organizations, by using the abstract strength of the class interests of the proletariat, and not the real strength of the proletariat conscious of its class interests. These “methods,” as adopted by us and the content of our Party work. All in all, these “methods” lead to the complete disappearance of questions of political tactics in Social Democracy.

Comrade Lenin has expressly confirmed this in a certain thesis, which cannot be passed over in silence. Replying to Comrade Nadezhdin, who had complained of the lack of “deep roots,” Lenin wrote: “This is the high point of illogicality, for the writer confuses the philosophical, historical and social questions of the “deep roots” of the movement with the technical organizational problem of a more effective struggle against the police.” Comrade Lenin so cherishes this idea, that he takes it up again in his latest pamphlet: “To allege that we are the Party of the class,” Lenin says in reply to Axelrod, “in order to justify negligence on organizational questions, to justify the confusion of organization and disorganization, is to repeat the error of Nadezhdin, who confused “the philosophical, historical and social question of the deep roots of the movement,” with the problem of technical organization.” (One Step Forward...) So for Comrade Lenin, the question of “deep roots” is not a question of political tactics but a question of philosophical doctrine; if our doctrine, Marxism, supplies us with the “deep roots,” all that is left then is to carry out the technical-organizational task. Between the “philosophical” problem and the “technical-organizational” problem, there is one small link missing in the case of Comrade Lenin: the content of our Party work. Having dissolved the tactical aspect of the question into the “philosophical” aspect, Lenin has acquired the right to identify the content of the Party’s practice with the content of the program. He deliberately ignores the fact that [what we imperatively need, that is not those] deep “philosophical” roots (how stupid! as thought the imam of any sect does not, from a “philosophical” point of view, have some deep root or another!), but [this is the] real political roots, a living contact with the masses, enabling us at each decisive moment to mobilize this mass around a flag which is recognized as their flag.

This is why, in our view, organizational questions are totally subordinate to the methods of our political tactics, and, for us, the identification of the question of the organization of the proletarian Party with the technical question of “improving the struggle against the police” is total bankruptcy. Total – for, if this identification “is based on the conspiratorial character of our present methods of work (as Parvus says in the few energetic lines he devotes to Lenin’s system), it is because the struggle against spies eclipses the struggle against absolutism and the other, much greater struggle, for the emancipation of the working class.”

Organizational tasks are for us totally subordinate to methods of political tactics. This is why this pamphlet too, arising from differences on “organizational questions” takes tactical questions as its starting point. To understand the difference on the organizational questions one must go beyond them, otherwise you asphyxiate in a surfeit of scholasticism and logic-chopping!

[ End of Part II ]

Bottom of: http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1904/tasks/ch03.htm

[ERISS]

Cossack Girl, Marina Yurlova, 200 pages pdf, english
http://www.warehouse23.com/products/cossack-girl

[Baris]

I find Corto Maltese fascinating in its dramatic way of telling but looking at objective side.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYJ_UWMJdnU
Corto Maltese - The Gilded House of Samarkand

[andatiep]

I find Corto Maltese fascinating in its dramatic way of telling but looking at objective side.
Corto Maltese - The Gilded House of Samarkand

Good. The animation films of Corto Maltese wasn't posted here yet, only the comics. Now it is done .

[Baris]

Distributing comics like this could be subject to censorship so I get way by posting video links.
I think with good leader portrait tradition AGEOD games could use more of a caricature portraits that will look more elegant if not heavy work for artists.

[ERISS]

Just released: Deux frères dans la tourmente (Two brothers in turmoil), S. Krivobok
http://7ecrit.com/livre/deux-freres-tourmente
IIRC, the french author (both parson, and university professor where I work) reports the story of two of his separated cosak great uncles, who'll met once in Paris.
I don't think it has already be translated.
Paper version may be ordered at Decitre, Arthaud, Chapitre, Amazon, or Fnac websites.