White Guard General Nikolai Yudenich
Yudenich in a portrait by M. Mizernyuk. 1916.
В previous article We discussed Nikolai Yudenich's origins, the beginning of his military career, his participation in the Russo-Japanese War, and his successes on the Caucasian Front during World War I. Today, we'll continue this story and discuss Yudenich's activities after his retirement and before the October Revolution, his escape to Finland, the Northwestern Army's march on Petrograd, and his life in exile.
So, after Yudenich's refusal to send the already disorganized troops of the Caucasian Front into an offensive that was doomed to failure, he was removed from the post of commander-in-chief and returned to Petrograd.
Yudenich after his resignation
The Provisional Government was leading Russia to ruin, and by the summer of 1917, this was clear to everyone. Lavr Kornilov was claiming the role of "savior of the Fatherland." From August 12th to 15th (25th to 28th), a State Conference was held in Moscow, at which this general apparently decided to become a Russian Bonaparte. Here's how M. Sholokhov describes his appearance in his novel "And Quiet Flows the Don":
The officers, linking arms, formed a protective chain, but were scattered. Dozens of hands reached out to Kornilov. A plump, disheveled woman trotted alongside him, trying to press her lips to the sleeve of his light green uniform. At the exit, amid a deafening roar of welcoming shouts, Kornilov was lifted into arms and carried.
And this is the testimony of L. Trotsky:
Morozova, the millionaire merchant, fell to her knees. The officers carried Kornilov out to the people.
A member of the Cadet Party, F. F. Rodichev, addressed the general with the following words:
Save Russia, and a grateful people will crown you.
Kornilov's arrival at the Meeting
General Yudenich, the military commander, supported Kornilov's plans to restore order in the country. Kornilov, incidentally, was confident that he was acting in strict accordance with the government's plans, which had itself requested that he send a detachment of reliable troops to Petrograd. Therefore, upon receiving Kerensky's telegram on the morning of August 27 demanding that he immediately relinquish his position as Supreme Commander to Lukomsky and report to Petrograd, he concluded that Lukomsky was "under pressure from some destructive forces" and replied:
In view of the grave situation of the country and the army, I decided not to relinquish the post of Supreme Commander-in-Chief and to first clarify the situation.
Upon receiving this telegram, Kerensky imagined that the army units he had summoned were marching to overthrow the government. He declared Kornilov a rebel and, finally losing his nerve, turned for help to the Bolsheviks, who had already been effectively driven underground. Ultimately, Kornilov's troops were stopped without a shot being fired—by Bolshevik agitators and the railway workers' union, the powerful "Vikzhel," about which Z. Gippius wrote on November 9, 1917:
We have become fence-sitters,
Don't crawl away!
Already dismantled with black hands
Vikzhel routes.
Don't crawl away!
Already dismantled with black hands
Vikzhel routes.
It's worth noting that the "black hands of Vikzhel" in this case is not a metaphor: the hands of the railway workers were indeed black—dirty with coal dust and grease. Here's how General P.N. Krasnov recalled the actions of Vikzhel activists:
By some order, unknown to anyone, a steam locomotive would be attached to some echelon, and it would be hauled two or three times: forty, sixty miles, and then it would end up somewhere off to the side, at a remote siding, without fodder for the horses and without food for the men. The people, seeing all this chaos going on around them, began arresting officers and superiors.
And this is Krasnov’s testimony about the work of Bolshevik agitators:
Almost everywhere we saw the same scene. Dragoons sat or stood on the tracks or in the carriages, and among them, a nimble figure in a soldier's greatcoat. We heard abrupt phrases:
"Comrades, what's wrong with you? Kerensky rescued you from under the officer's baton, gave you freedom, and now you want to bend over backwards again, only to have him poke you in the teeth. Is that it?" Or:
"Comrades, Kerensky is for freedom and the people's happiness, and General Kornilov is for discipline and the death penalty. Are you really with Kornilov?"
"Comrades, what's wrong with you? Kerensky rescued you from under the officer's baton, gave you freedom, and now you want to bend over backwards again, only to have him poke you in the teeth. Is that it?" Or:
"Comrades, Kerensky is for freedom and the people's happiness, and General Kornilov is for discipline and the death penalty. Are you really with Kornilov?"
However, unlike Denikin, the retired Yudenich suffered no harm and was not arrested. After the Bolsheviks came to power, he lived in Petrograd in the building of the Russian Insurance Company, where a sergeant major he had known since the Pamir Expedition served as janitor. He left Russia in January 1918 (according to other sources, in November 1917): using false documents, he and his wife and adjutant moved to Helsinki, Finland, where he hoped to find help from an old acquaintance from the General Staff Academy, Carl Mannerheim.
He negotiated with representatives of England and Sweden, recognized Kolchak as Supreme Ruler, and in April 1919, the admiral transferred funds to him to finance another White Guard army, which was located in Estonia and the Russian Pskov Governorate and was called the Northwestern Army. It was commanded by General Alexander Rodzianko, who had already attempted to advance on Petrograd in the spring and summer of that year, but was now forced to cede his post to Yudenich, who had more authority in the troops. This army numbered 20,000 men, and Yudenich had at his disposal over a hundred artillery pieces, two armored trains, eight armored cars, and six tanks (who, however, were unable to take part in the fighting – they got stuck in the mud of the autumn roads).
Generals N. Yudenich and A. Rodzianko with officers of the Northwestern White Army, 1919.
Ironically, Yudenich's allies were supposed to be the Estonians, whose independence he refused to recognize. Yudenich even managed to issue his own money; here's a credit note from the field treasury of the Northwestern Front bearing the general's signature:
The offensive on Petrograd
Defense of Petrograd, map
In 1919, the situation in Russia seemed to favor the Whites. Denikin launched his offensive, and by the end of the summer, his troops had captured Kharkov, Yekaterinoslav (Dnepropetrovsk), and Tsaritsyn. In September, Sumy, Oboyan, Stary Oskol, and Kursk fell. And on September 28, Yudenich's Northwestern Army launched an offensive on Petrograd. By October 20, Yamburg, Luga, Tsarskoye Selo, and Pavlovsk had been captured. The Whites failed to cut the Nikolayevskaya railway, which supplied Petrograd, but the city remained only 20 kilometers away. Trotsky recalled:
In Petrograd, I found the most abject confusion. Everything was in disarray. The troops were retreating, crumbling into pieces. Zinoviev was the center of this confusion. Sverdlov told me, "Zinoviev is panic."
When things were going badly, Zinoviev would usually lie down on the sofa, not in a metaphorical but in a real sense, and sigh... Apathy, hopelessness, and doom had also taken hold of the lower ranks of the administrative apparatus.
When things were going badly, Zinoviev would usually lie down on the sofa, not in a metaphorical but in a real sense, and sigh... Apathy, hopelessness, and doom had also taken hold of the lower ranks of the administrative apparatus.
Mass repressions were unleashed in the “liberated” territories, and Demyan Bedny later wrote with full justification:
General Yudenich is brave
He was also a bloody executioner,
He broke through to Leningrad,
To organize a parade there:
He didn't skimp on the effects,
Decorate all the brochures,
On the shoulders of the lanterns
Hang the rebels.
He was also a bloody executioner,
He broke through to Leningrad,
To organize a parade there:
He didn't skimp on the effects,
Decorate all the brochures,
On the shoulders of the lanterns
Hang the rebels.
It should be noted, however, that Yudenich had no need to order executions: most often, extrajudicial executions were carried out at the initiative of his subordinates (who had considerably tarnished this general's name) and even without his knowledge. Particularly memorable was the former tsarist captain Stanislav Bulak-Balakhovich, who began as a Red Army commander but, upon learning that a decision had been made to arrest him for unjustified cruelty and embezzlement of entrusted property, fled to the Whites, receiving colonel's epaulettes from them. In Yudenich's army, this sadist took up his favorite pastime; Prince Lvov, a correspondent for the newspaper "Russkie Vedomosti," wrote in 1920:
We were driving through a region occupied a year earlier by the notorious Bulak-Balakhovich. Popular memory of him is not good. Robberies and, most importantly, the gallows, must have forever ruined Balakhovich's reputation among the peasant world. Forty to fifty miles from Pskov, peasants speak with stern disapproval of his executions in Pskov squares and his inhuman penchant for hangings.
S. Bulak-Balakhovich (far left) and the commander of the Estonian army, Johan Laidoner, Pskov, May 31, 1919.
Among other things, the White Guards also made their mark by burning down the colored smalt factory founded by Lomonosov.
It's hard to believe, but in memory of Yudenich's march on Petrograd, the first "monument to the White Guard movement" in Russia was erected on the Pulkovo Heights in 1991. And already in 2008, a monument to the "soldiers of the Northwestern Army" appeared in the village of Opolye (Kingisepp District, Leningrad Region).
Let's return to the turbulent year of 1919. To repel Yudenich's advance toward Petrograd, new combat units of the Red Army were quickly redeployed, including some units of the 2nd Division from Frunze's army, which had fought against Kolchak.
Soldiers of the 2nd Rifle Division near Petrograd, 1919.
But G. Kotovsky’s cavalry brigade was late – the White Guards had already been driven back from the city.
On October 21, 1920, the Northwestern Army's advance was halted. The following day, the Red Army itself went on the offensive, and in early November, threatened with encirclement, Yudenich's forces began to retreat. In mid-November, Yudenich wrote to Johan Laidoner, commander of the Estonian Army:
The Reds are persistently attacking with overwhelming force, and in places are pushing back units of the army entrusted to me, particularly from the direction of Gdov. The troops are exhausted by the constant fighting. In the extremely cramped space between the front and the Estonian border—in the immediate rear of the troops—all the supply trains, reserves, prisoners, and refugees have accumulated, which is severely restricting troop maneuvering. The slightest setback could create panic in the rear and lead to disaster and the destruction of the entire army. It is necessary to transfer all rear units to the left bank of the Narva River no later than tomorrow. I foresee the possibility, even the inevitability, of a further army retreat, which could lead to conflict if the Estonian border is crossed. To avoid the inevitable destruction of the army, I ask you not to refuse to immediately accept the army entrusted to me under your command and assign it a sector of the front shared with the troops entrusted to you. I ask you to report my request to the Estonian government to accept the Northwestern Army under Estonian protection.
The Estonians treated the retreating White Guards with no ceremony. Journalist Heinrich Grossen wrote about this:
Despite the winter cold, the unfortunate Russians were literally stripped naked, and everything was mercilessly taken. Gold crosses were ripped from their chests, purses were taken, rings were taken from their fingers. Before the eyes of the Russian troops, the Estonians stripped the soldiers, shivering from the cold, of their new British uniforms, giving them rags in exchange, but not always. Warm American underwear was not spared either, and tattered greatcoats were thrown over the naked bodies of the unfortunate vanquished.
Narva. Interned soldiers of Yudenich's army. February 1920.
Lieutenant General A. Rodzianko, who commanded the Northern Corps, which later became the Northwestern Army, from June 19 to October 2, 1919, blamed Yudenich for the defeat:
Enormous responsibility for the army's destruction rests with General Yudenich himself, a weak-willed and stubborn man who was completely alien to the aspirations and desires of those fighting for a just cause. This decrepit old man had no right to assume such a responsible role; those Russian public figures who promoted this mummy to such a responsible position are grave criminals against the fallen fighters.
1912, Olympic Games in Stockholm, member of the Russian Empire team A.P. Rodzianko.
Incidentally, A. Kuprin, who served as a lieutenant in the Northwestern Army at the time (he was the editor of the newspaper “Prinevsky Krai”), recalled that during the offensive on Petrograd:
Generals Rodzianko and Palen, both tall giants, in light-colored officer's overcoats, with weapons, which seemed like a toy in their hands, went on the attack ahead of the chains.
Lieutenant A. Kuprin in a photograph from 1914.
Alexei Tolstoy was also very critical of Yudenich, calling him “a stupid, stubborn, ferocious man and an armchair general” in his novel “The Emigrants.”
On January 22, 1922, Yudenich officially announced the dissolution of his army and handed over the remainder of its treasury—227,000 pounds sterling—to the "liquidation commission." The former allies of Yudenich's army were housed in what amounted to concentration camps, with deaths from cold and disease (primarily typhus) at a high rate. As a result, more than 7,000 White Guards fled from the "hospitable" Estonians back to Soviet Russia.
Yudenich, of course, settled in quite comfortably—in the expensive Commerce Hotel in Reval—but on the night of January 29, 1920, he was arrested by the aforementioned Bulak-Balakhovich. At the request of the French and British military missions, the general was released, and Balakhovich fled to Poland, where J. Pilsudski told B. Savinkov:
Balakhovich may be a bandit, but since there is no choice, it is probably better to deal with Balakhovich than with gold-shouldered generals.
Eventually, this sadist rose to the rank of Polish general.
Yudenich in exile
On February 24, 1920, the former general was evacuated from Estonia in a carriage belonging to the British military mission. He traveled via Riga, Stockholm, and Copenhagen to London, but soon moved to Nice. He avoided political involvement, but instead became the head of the Society of Zealots of Russian stories In Nice, he lectured on military operations in the Caucasus. In 1933, at the age of 71, he died of tuberculosis. Demyan Bedny responded to his death with these verses:
Got it in the lower back,
And Yudenich goes abroad
Without looking back, he also stole it,
Where he was ill for thirteen years
And the other day he died in Nice –
In a venereal hospital.
And Yudenich goes abroad
Without looking back, he also stole it,
Where he was ill for thirteen years
And the other day he died in Nice –
In a venereal hospital.
However, now Yudenich's name, as the holder of three degrees of the Order of St. George, is engraved on a marble plaque in the St. George Hall of the Moscow Kremlin.
Alexandra Yudenich outlived her husband by 29 years. In 1956, she was elected honorary chairperson of the meeting dedicated to the 40th anniversary of the capture of the Erzurum fortress. In 1962, she published her memoirs about her husband in the magazine “Chasovoy”.
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