The Great Chaotic Party
Ungern assembled the Asiatic Cavalry Division. Though it was the middle of the night, a message to Lieutenant General Anton Denikin would be enough to set the army in motion for a surprise attack.
“You bastards! The enemy we face is nothing but a rabble—more heads than sense, and not a proper weapon among them! Now we’re going to ram straight up their backsides! Everyone prepare!”
Thousands of cavalrymen slipped into motion under cover of darkness.
And someone was watching them in secret.
That man’s momentum is no joke.
George S. Patton had dashed all the way to South Russia with the American detachment the instant he received Anastasia’s permission. Their role had been purely auxiliary to the Russian White Army, but now thousands of cavalry were moving out at night. This was obviously a devious Slavic scheme to rob him of his rightful glory.
The American force was small, true, but that didn’t mean he was willing to let that Ungern fellow steal the spotlight. The answer was obvious.
“We’re moving too! Let’s show those red bastards the fighting spirit of the United States of America that made all Europe tremble!”
“Sir, we don’t have weapons.”
“There’s plenty lying around! Mount machine guns on the trucks!”
“We’re short on trucks, sir.”
“Then put them on the wagons!”
At Patton’s impossible demands, the handful of American support personnel—who had come as non-combat auxiliaries—followed after him in tears, scraping together the bare minimum to obey. And so the Americans who had ended up tagging after Patton now found themselves chasing Ungern’s heels as well.
“Those men? We cannot afford to lose to the Yankee bastards here of all places!”
The German volunteers from the defeated nation, who had been trying to remain inconspicuous, lit up with fighting spirit and fell in behind them.
Those with less enthusiasm simply muttered among themselves.
“What a shitshow. What an absolute shitshow.”
“Still, things get quieter once they leave, don’t they?”
“Better than fighting, at least?”
Only the French volunteers, still seething over how the World War had petered out in such an unsatisfying manner, felt that way.
And then—
“Is Ungern out of his mind?”
Lieutenant General Anton Denikin was dumbfounded when the sudden order arrived to move a large force in the middle of the night. The man had brought only a few thousand troops, yet here he was issuing commands to a lieutenant general?
Still, Denikin had sharpened his instincts during his long confinement in South Russia. He quickly realized what was happening. Following Ungern, both the American and German contingents were also on the move.
Those American and German troops might be wearing Russian Imperial uniforms at the princess’s request, but they were moving all the same. If he stayed idle now, the chance to distinguish himself would vanish.
Anton Denikin mobilized the entire strength of the Southern White Army.
Boom! Boom!
Rat-tat-tat! Bang!
The Bolsheviks stationed near Kiev (Kyiv) were thrown into confusion by the sudden thunder of artillery and gunfire before dawn.
“These reactionary swine and their cowardly night attack!”
“You’re the last ones who should be talking, you filthy cockroaches!”
The Bolsheviks, who had been on the verge of capturing Kiev, fell into utter chaos under Ungern’s surprise assault. Though they held the advantage in numbers, the five thousand battle-hardened cavalrymen were devastatingly effective. The American and German forces arriving late and striking from separate directions only deepened the illusion that the reactionaries had launched a massive night offensive with a huge army.
They had only just managed to repel the guerrillas Makhno left behind. Now they faced yet another catastrophe.
“I-I don’t want to die!”
“I surrender!”
“Do you want to die by my hand?! Get out there and fight!”
“You go fight then!”
Attacked from every direction in the darkness, the conscripts—who had no idea of the enemy’s true strength—watched their comrades being swept away and surrendered in droves, paralyzed by terror. They had made some preparations against a possible night raid, but the enemy war cries echoing from all sides shattered their morale. When the political commissars threatening them opened fire, some soldiers turned their guns on the commissars instead.
“Hello?”
“That’s an American! The princess brought in foreign troops! Gah!”
As the midnight pandemonium continued, Anton Denikin’s army joined the attack to deliver the finishing blow. In a single night the Bolshevik force suffered catastrophic losses.
Surprisingly, the overall commander of this Red Army contingent was Trotsky, but Stalin’s interference had prevented him from coming in person. The man who actually led the troops was Alexander Yegorov, a former Imperial Russian colonel who had defected to the Red Army and now served as a field commander. Together with Mikhail Frunze—who had been appointed the southern commander against the enemy in the Ukrainian theater—they had driven into Ukraine, recently pushing back the British and seizing central Ukraine.
Yet even Yegorov could not withstand this large-scale night raid.
“Those damned reactionaries!”
It had already been a battle won by sheer numbers. Yegorov had handled that numerical horde well enough, but he possessed no answer to a night assault. How could anyone have predicted it? And who would have imagined the enemy would come on horseback?
The Red Army, composed mostly of untrained soldiers, stood almost no chance against thousands of cavalry thundering across the earth in the dead of night. As the fighting continued, machine-gun fire erupted from unknown positions in the darkness, and panic spread like wildfire. Men fled in every direction.
Semyon Timoshenko and Semyon Budyonny fought desperately beneath him, but once an army begins to collapse there is little that can be done. Mikhail Frunze’s forces arrived to reinforce Yegorov, but Yegorov’s army had already been routed. Frunze could only gather the survivors and order a retreat.
In the end, the Red Army that had marched to secure Ukraine was forced to withdraw.
“So even Ukraine has failed!”
Trotsky, who had planned the operation, could not escape the political damage.
Trotsky ground his teeth as he received the report of defeat across the Ukrainian theater.
“Damn it. So Comrade Yegorov was no match for Anton Denikin!”
There was nothing to be done. Brusilov still refused to cooperate. They had only managed to recruit Imperial-era officers and generals into the Red Army after dozens of rounds of persuasion and threats. Yegorov had been one of them.
In truth, Trotsky himself had wanted to go to Ukraine, but he could not. Inside the party, Stalin was openly aiming for his position.
Even Comrade Lenin was no longer the man he had been. Whether his judgment had dulled or not, for some reason he seemed unable to respond effectively to the reactionary forces. It would be good if he would restrain Stalin a little, but Lenin already appeared overburdened simply trying to hold the party together. Instead of checking Stalin, he was allowing him to recruit party cadres under the excuse of stabilizing the Communist Party.
The Soviet is collapsing.
The revolution was collapsing. The Soviet they had barely managed to establish was falling apart. Considering the process of its founding, reaching this point at all had been close to a miracle. They had come so far—so very far—and yet this was too much.
If only that Anastasia woman had never appeared, the reactionaries would have torn each other apart and collapsed on their own!
Just who was that Anastasia woman to block their revolution?
The Red Army sent to the Baltic region had at least defeated the White forces there, but that had been an independent White Army with no connection to the princess and was not their main force.
And so Trotsky had no choice but to report the failures at Yekaterinburg and now in Ukraine to Lenin. Although the field commander had been Yegorov, the one who had issued the order was himself. He had to tell Lenin about this defeat—which was no cause for pride, but rather signaled that a grave crisis had come to the Soviet.
“Comrade Trotsky.”
“Yes, Comrade Lenin.”
“Do you have anything to say about this Ukrainian campaign?”
“That is…”
“It seems we have merely provoked the great powers for nothing.”
Had they completely crushed the opposition and taken Ukraine, the situation would be different. No matter how imperialist they were, right after the war they would have no troops to spare for Russia. They would be too busy watching for communist uprisings at home to send armies abroad. Securing Ukraine had therefore been a gamble worth taking. If they could seize Ukraine and defeat the reactionaries, they could reverse the tide of the war.
With the rich lands of Ukraine as their base, they would crush South Russia, drive the princess back into Siberia, and push all the way to Vladivostok. That had been the grand plan. Above all, victory would win back the people’s hearts and unite the Soviets. If they could achieve that, the Red Army could be rebuilt any number of times.
But they had failed. And not even to the imperialist powers, but to the White reactionary forces. At this rate the already faltering Soviet would be chopped off at the roots by the princess’s axe.
“Comrade Lenin. But we have no other options. Ukraine was territory we absolutely had to secure if we were to achieve victory.”
“And what was the result? Did we not fail? We should have focused on consolidating our internal control. Even without the regions that have already fallen to the White reactionaries, we still had enough territory to rebuild.”
“This was unavoidable for the legitimacy of the revolution—to prove that our revolution is just. If we had cowered before the imperialists, our revolution would have ended right there.”
“For the time being, keep the army under tight control.”
“Comrade Lenin.”
“Not long ago, Nizhny Novgorod fell to Pyotr Wrangel.”
Nizhny Novgorod had fallen. It was a city close to Moscow. Its fall meant the road to Moscow now lay open.
“Then—!”
“Now is the time to reinforce Moscow’s defenses. If we lose Moscow, we will have to fall back to Petrograd.”
Moscow was effectively their last stronghold. Losing it would severely weaken the Soviet.
“Ugh…”
Trotsky clenched his teeth.
“If we focus solely on defense and manage to hold Moscow, we may be able to negotiate a truce with the imperialist powers.”
If they could maintain a purely defensive posture from now on, they might be able to stalemate the conflict and force a ceasefire based on that defensive line. It was the worst possible option, but to buy time there was no choice.
“In the meantime, continue to comfort, persuade, and agitate the people. Tell them that the invading princess intends to return them to the oppression of Tsarist rule.”
“Understood.”
Trotsky left Lenin’s office with heavy, dragging steps. And then he immediately fixed a glare on Stalin, who was standing nearby speaking with other comrades.
“Stalin! Why is talk of a truce with the reactionaries coming out of Comrade Lenin’s mouth?”
“Face reality. It is the only option left after your failure.”
“What did you say?”
Was he really saying that? Who was the one who had failed to defend Tsaritsyn?! And he had the audacity to say such things with that calm, shameless expression!
“The princess’s army attacking Tsaritsyn had tanks with them.”
“Tanks?”
Hadn’t he heard about that? Everyone knew they had fled in terror of those tanks, so why was he repeating the same story?
“Yes. Tanks flying the Russian Imperial flag. It means Britain and France have committed themselves and are even providing armored support. Those tanks tore through the trenches in an instant. We must acknowledge reality. The great powers have intervened deeply. The only way for us to survive is to hammer the White reactionary forces so hard that those supporting the princess grow exhausted. By sacrificing the lives of the people.”
This was not the revolution Trotsky had wanted. This hollow, meaningless revolution. He hated this reality in which they had to watch their backs around the imperialists. If things had come to this, it would be better to fight to the death.
Comrade Lenin was acting strangely, and Stalin was taking advantage of it. A truce with the reactionaries? They were the ones who had secured even South Russia. The Bolsheviks in the Far East had long since been crushed by the reactionaries.
Of course, if they agreed to a truce now, the Soviet might yet rise again someday. But that would not mean victory in this civil war. The princess was a dangerous figure. She was the symbol of the revolution’s destruction. To agree to a truce would be to admit that the revolution remained unfinished.
To reverse this bitter reality, they had to do whatever it took. They had to hold Moscow.
