Sevastopol's Wars by Mungo Melvin CB OBE

Author:Mungo Melvin CB OBE
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781472822277
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2017-02-11T16:00:00+00:00

PART FOUR

MODERN WAR

CHAPTER 12

RED TERROR TO PATRIOTIC WAR

‘The principles of Communism are the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the employment of state coercion in the transition period.’

V. I. Lenin1

RED TERROR

On the Crimean peninsula, Red power superseded White control within twenty-four hours. Wrangel’s fleet departed the Sevastopol roadstead on 14 November 1920; Red Army troops occupied the undefended city on the following day. Leading elements of Budyonny’s 1st Cavalry Army and soldiers of Blyukher’s 51st Rifle Division received the honour of entering the Whites’ last main stronghold. Eyewitnesses recalled that a huge armoured car, bristling with machine guns, represented the first sign of Bolshevik troops. Not only was it decorated with several five-pointed red stars, but it was also festooned with the word ‘Antichrist’. According to a modern Sevastopol historian, Dmitry Sokolov, this provocative motto became an ‘omen of impending misfortune’ to many people remaining in Sevastopol. ‘No-one could have imagined’, he observed, ‘that the reality would be a hundred times worse and more terrible than any misgivings’ at the time.2 Although the Bolsheviks had come and gone before, this time, the Red Army, and the revolutionary government it represented, were here to stay. There would be no escape from its vengeful rule.

The dénouement of Wrangel’s regime, if long expected, had proved quite sudden in the event. Following the departure of the Whites’ ships, Sevastopol’s citizens were dazed and uncertain. Many, and rightly so, were fearful of what would befall them. At least one semblance of normality remained. As there had been no fighting for the city, essential public utilities such as electricity and water were still functioning normally. Shops and restaurants, however, were closed until further notice. Abandoned carts, household belongings, and the sundry impedimenta of a defeated army cluttered the streets and squares of the city centre. All the White Army’s heavy weapons such as artillery pieces had been left behind. In the waters of the roadstead and its many harbours only rusting hulks, half-sunken ships and unserviceable craft remained.

Although Frunze informed Lenin on 16 November that Kerch had been occupied, the ‘Lion of the Revolution’ had proclaimed his main triumph on the 15th. ‘Today our units entered Sevastopol’, he reported. ‘With powerful blows the Red regiments have finally crushed the south Russian counter-revolution’. Optimistically, he added that ‘the tortured country now has the chance to begin to heal the wounds inflicted by the imperialist and civil wars’.3 In fact, the torture had yet to begin. The executions of the Whites who remained, and of anybody suspected of either sympathising with, or supporting, them, assumed such numbers that the waves of ‘liquidation’ became widespread. Sokolov has described the killings as the ‘Revenge of the Winners’ in the Russian Civil War, which manifested itself in an unparalleled ‘orgy of red terror’ in Crimea.4

The killings came in apparent contradiction of Frunze’s stated intentions of five days before. In his order of the day of 11 November 1920, he had expressly instructed ‘all troops of the Red Army to show clemency to those who surrender and to those who have been taken captive’.

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