x -92 Louis Sheehan

6:36 2015-04-09 04:36:36 open open union-blockade-20227890 publish 0 0 post 0 Louis Sheehan Lou Sheehan Darius N. Couch http://Louis9J9Sheehan9esquire.blog.ca/2015/04/06/darius-n-couch-20223209/ Mon, 06 Apr 2015 03:22:35 +0200 Beforethebigbang <p>Darius N. Couch From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Darius Nash Couch Darius N. Couch - Brady-Handy.jpg Portrait of Darius Couch by Mathew Brady or Levin C. Handy taken in 1861 or 1862. Born July 23, 1822 Putnam County, New York Died February 12, 1897 (aged 74) Norwalk, Connecticut Place of burial Mount Pleasant Cemetery, Taunton, Massachusetts Allegiance United StatesUnited States of America Union Louis Sheehan Service/branch Artillery, Infantry Years of service 1846–55, 1861–65 Rank Union army maj gen rank insignia.jpg Major General Commands held II Corps, Army of the Potomac Department of the Susquehanna 2nd Division, XXIII Corps Battles/wars Mexican-American War Seminole Wars American Civil War Signature Darius N Couch signature.svg Darius Nash Couch[1] (July 23, 1822 – February 12, 1897) was an American soldier, businessman, and naturalist. He served as a career U.S. Army officer during the Mexican-American War, the Second Seminole War, and as a general officer in the Union Army during the American Civil War. During the Civil War, Couch fought notably in the Peninsula and Fredericksburg campaigns of 1862, and the Chancellorsville and Gettysburg campaigns of 1863. He rose to command a corps in the Army of the Potomac, and led divisions in both the Eastern Theater and Western Theater. Militia under his command played a strategic role during the Gettysburg Campaign in delaying the advance of Confederate troops of the Army of Northern Virginia and preventing their crossing the Susquehanna River, critical to Pennsylvania's defense. He has been described as personally courageous, very thin in build, and after Mexico of frail health.[2] Contents 1 Early life and career 2 American Civil War service 2.1 Seven Pines 2.2 Fredericksburg 2.3 Chancellorsville 2.4 Gettysburg 3 Postbellum career and death 4 See also 5 Notes 6 References 7 Further reading 8 External links Early life and career Couch [3] was born in 1822 on a farm in the village of Southeat in Putnam County, New York, and was educated at the local schools there.[4] In 1842 he entered the United States Military Academy at West Point, graduating four years later 13th out of 59 cadets. On July 1, 1846, Couch was commissioned a brevet second lieutenant and was assigned to the 4th U.S. Artillery.[5] Couch then saw action with the U.S. Army during the Mexican-American War, most notably in the Battle of Buena Vista on February 22–23, 1847. For his actions on the second day of this fight, he was brevetted a first lieutenant for "gallant and meritorious conduct." After the war ended in 1848 Couch began serving in garrison duty at Fort Monroe in Hampton, Virginia. The following year he was stationed at Fort Pickens, located near Pensacola, Florida, and then in Key West. Couch next participated in the Seminole Wars during 1849 and into 1850.[6] Fort Johnston in March 2008; Couch was stationed there in 1851 and 1852. Returning to garrison duty, later that year Couch was sent to Fort Columbus in New York Harbor, and in 1851 Couch was involved in recruiting at Jefferson Barracks located on the Mississippi River at Lemay, Missouri. Later in 1851 he returned to Fort Columbus, and then was ordered to Fort Johnston in Southport, North Carolina, staying there into 1852, and next in garrison at Fort Mifflin in Philadelphia until 1853.[6] Couch then took a one-year leave of absence from the army from 1853 to 1854 to conduct a scientific mission for the Smithsonian Institution in northern Mexico. There, he discovered the species that were known as Couch's Kingbird and Couch's Spadefoot Toad.[7] Upon his return to the United States in 1854, Couch was ordered to Washington, D.C., on detached service. Later that year he resumed garrison duty in Fort Independence at Castle Island along Boston Harbor, Massachusetts. Also in 1854 he was stationed at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and would remain there into the following year. On April 30, 1855, Couch resigned his commission in the U.S. Army. From 1855 to 1857 he was a merchant in New York City.[6] He then moved to Taunton, Massachusetts, and worked as a copper fabricator in the company owned by his wife's family. Couch was still working in Taunton when the American Civil War began in 1861.[7] American Civil War service At the outbreak of the Civil War, Couch was appointed commander of the 7th Massachusetts Infantry on June 15, 1861, with the rank of colonel in the Union Army. That August he was promoted to brigadier general with an effective date back to May 17. He was given brigade command in the Military Division then Army of the Potomac that fall, and Couch was given divisional command in the VI Corps in the following spring.[8] From July 1861 to March 1862 he helped train and then maintain the defenses of Washington, D.C.. He participated in the Peninsula Campaign, fighting in the Siege of Yorktown on April 5–May 4 and the Battle of Williamsburg the following day.[6] Seven Pines Map of 1862's Battle of Seven Pines Couch led his division during the Battle of Seven Pines on May 31 and June 1, 1862. In this engagement his corps commander, Brig. Gen. Erasmus D. Keyes, ordered Couch's division and that of Brig. Gen. Silas Casey forward of the Union defensive line, Couch's men right behind those of Casey. This placed the IV Corps in an isolated position, vulnerable to attack on three sides; however poorly coordinated Confederate movements allowed Couch and Casey to partially prepare entrenchments for impending the assault. As the fighting continued throughout May 31 both Couch and Casey were slowly driven back, with their right flank units in the most peril. At this time Couch counterattacked with his old 7th Massachusetts Infantry and the 62nd New York Infantry in an attempt to bolster that side, however he did not succeed and was forced back, as was the rest of the Union IV Corps by nightfall.[9] Couch continued to lead his division during the 1862 Seven Days Battles that followed, fighting in the Battle of Oak Grove on June 25 and the Battle of Malvern Hill on July 1. Later in July Couch's health began to fail, prompting him to offer his resignation. The army commander, Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan, refused to send it to the U.S. War Department, and instead Couch was promoted to major general, to date from July 4. Couch was involved in the Maryland Campaign that fall, although absent from the Battle of Antietam on September 17.[10] Fredericksburg On November 14, 1862, Couch was assigned command of the II Corps, and he led it during the Battle of Fredericksburg as part of Maj. Gen. Edwin V. Sumner's "Right Grand Division".[5] In this fight Couch's corps contained three divisions, led by Brig. Gens. Winfield S. Hancock, Oliver O. Howard, and William H. French.[11] Early on December 12 infantry from his corps attempted to support the Union engineers' efforts to lay pontoon bridges across the Rappahannock River and into the town. When Confederate fire repeatedly prevented this, and a heavy artillery bombardment failed as well, the decision was made to send small groups of soldiers in pontoon boats across to dislodge the defenders. This amphibious assault was executed by one of Couch's brigades under Col. Norman J. Hall (3rd Brigade, 2nd Division - 19th & 20th Massachusetts, 7th Michigan, 42nd & 59th New York, & 127th Pennsylvania) which finally succeeded in driving out the Confederates.[12] Darius Couch's II Army Corps attacks during the 1862 Battle of Fredericksburg As the Union soldiers entered a smoldering Fredericksburg they began to sack the city, forcing Couch to order his provost guard to the bridges and collect the loot. The next day his corps was ordered to attack the Confederate position at the base of Marye's Heights above Fredericksburg. To better watch his men's progress Couch entered the town's courthouse and climbed its cupola, where he could see French's division advancing. As they approached the Confederate defenses, Couch could see his men taking very heavy fire and easily repulsed, described "as if the division had simply vanished." Hancock's division followed that of French, meeting the same fate with high casualties as well. Howard, who was to go in next, was with Couch as Hancock's division attacked. Briefly through the smoke they could see the mounting casualties, and Couch reportedly said "Oh, great God! See how our men, our poor fellows, are falling."[13] Couch ordered Howard to march his division toward the right and possibly flank the Confederate defenses his other two divisions had failed to dislodge. However the terrain did not permit any force marching from Fredericksburg towards Marye's Heights to attack anywhere other than at the stone wall along its base. When Howard's men attacked they were crowded back to the left, meeting the same resistance and were repulsed. As other Union soldiers followed the II Corps in, Couch ordered his artillery to move into the field and blast the Confederates at close range. When his own artillery chief protested exposing the gun crews in this fashion, Couch stated that he agreed but it was necessary to slow the Confederate fire in some way. The cannon stopped about 150 yards from the stone wall and opened fire, but quickly lost most of their crews and did little to slacken the enemy fire. During this Couch moved slowly along his line of men, who were on the ground firing as best they could until nightfall.[14] Recounting the attack on the heights on December 13, Couch wrote after the war: The musketry fire was very heavy & the artillery fire was simply terrible. I sent word, many times, to our artillery on the right of Falmouth that they were firing into us & tearing our own men to pieces. I thought they had made a mistake in the range. But I learned later that the fire came from the guns of the enemy on their extreme left.[15] In the attack Couch's force suffered heavily, as did the rest of the Right Grand Division. He reported the II Corps sustained over four thousand casualties during the Fredericksburg Campaign. French's division lost an estimated 1,200 soldiers and Hancock around 2,000. Howard lost about 850 men, 150 of which were hit on December 11 supporting the engineers at the river.[16] That night the Union wounded remained in the field, and Couch wrote after the war what he saw: "It was a night of dreadful suffering. Many died of wounds & exposure, and as fast as men died they stiffened in the wintry air, & on the front line were rolled forward for protection to the living. Frozen men were placed for dumb sentries."[15] Chancellorsville Following the Union defeat at Fredericksburg and the inglorious Mud March in January 1863, the commander of the Army of the Potomac—Couch's immediate superior—was again replaced. Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside was relieved and Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker named to his place. Hooker reorganized the army and drew up plans for a new campaign against the Army of Northern Virginia. He wished to avoid attacking the Confederate defenses at Fredericksburg and flank them out of position, thereby fighting on more open ground. After the reorganization Couch continued to lead the II Corps, with his divisions commanded by Hancock and French (both now major generals) and Brig. Gen. John Gibbon at the head of Howard's former division, a total of about 17,000 soldiers.[17] During the ensuing Chancellorsville Campaign Couch was the senior corps commander, making him Hooker's second-in-command. In late April, Hooker began moving his corps across the Rappahannock and Rapidan Rivers, ordering two of Couch's divisions to entrench and defend the Banks's Ford crossing of the Rappahannock and detach Gibbon's 5,000 men to remain at the Union camp back at Falmouth on April 29. The following day Couch had cleared the ford and was marching toward Chancellorsville. In the afternoon of May 1 Hooker—normally quite aggressive—cautiously slowed his marching army, and soon he stopped their movement altogether, despite some success against the Confederates and the loud protests of his corps commanders. Couch sent Hancock's division to bolster the Union men already engaged and informed Hooker they could handle the enemy in front of them. However, Hooker's orders stood; march back into the positions they held the previous day and assume a defensive posture. Couch complied and ordered Hancock's division to form a rear guard as they withdrew. As Hancock formed his men, Couch could see Confederate artillery aiming for the massed Union columns, and he told his staff "Let us draw their fire." The group of mounted officers clustered around a clearing where the enemy cannon could easily view them, thus attracting their fire and sparing the marching infantry; Couch and his staff also went unharmed. By nightfall the Union soldiers were busy fortifying the ground. Couch formed his divisions behind the XII Corps in roughly the center of Hooker's line.[18] Couch's force defending against the attacks of Maj. Gen. Lafayette McLaws in the morning of May 3, 1863, during the Battle of Chancellorsville By late afternoon on May 2, Hooker's line was hit on the right (the XI Corps led by Howard) by Confederates under Lt. Gen. Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson, and despite resisting the XI Corps was routed and ran toward Chancellorsville. The remaining corps tightened into a "U" shaped formation by May 3, and Confederate artillery began shelling their positions, including Couch's men. At about 9 a.m. that day Hooker was stunned by enemy fire when a shell hit the pillar he was leaning on, temporarily incapacitating him within an hour. At that time Hooker turned command of the army over to Couch, and through consulting with a "groggy" Hooker it was decided to withdraw the army to defensive lines to the north, with the other commanders (except an embarrassed Howard) strongly advocating an attack instead.[19] Gettysburg Darius Couch as a major general in the Union Army. Couch requested reassignment after quarreling with Hooker. He commanded the newly created Department of the Susquehanna during the Gettysburg Campaign in 1863.[20] Fort Couch in Lemoyne, Pennsylvania, was constructed under his direction and was named in his honor. Assigned to protect Harrisburg from a threatened attack by Confederates under Lt. Gen. Richard S. Ewell, Couch directed militia from his department to skirmish with enemy cavalry elements at Sporting Hill, one of the war's northernmost engagements.[21] Couch's militia then joined pursuing Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia into Maryland after the Battle of Gettysburg. Confederates again invaded Couch's Department of the Susquehanna in August 1864, as Brig. Gen. John McCausland burned the town of Chambersburg.[22] In December, Couch returned to the front lines with an assignment to the Western Theater, where he commanded a division in the XXIII Corps of the Army of the Ohio in the Franklin-Nashville Campaign and for the remainder of the war. Couch finished his military service after the Carolinas Campaign in 1865. Postbellum career and death Couch Gravesite in Mount Pleasant Cemetery Couch returned to civilian life in Taunton after the war, where he ran unsuccessfully as a Democratic candidate for Governor of Massachusetts in 1865. He later briefly served as president of a mining company in West Virginia. Couch moved to Connecticut in 1871, where he served as the Quartermaster General, and then Adjutant General, for the state militia until 1884. In 1888 he joined the Aztec Club of 1847 by right of his service in the Mexican War. He also joined the Connecticut Society of the Sons of the American Revolution in 1890. He died in Norwalk, Connecticut. He was buried in Mount Pleasant Cemetery in Taunton. See also Portal icon Connecticut portal Portal icon Military of the United States portal Portal icon Biography portal Portal icon United States Army portal Portal icon American Civil War portal List of American Civil War generals List of Massachusetts generals in the American Civil War Massachusetts in the American Civil War Notes Couch's middle name was undoubtedly Nash, although a middle initial of "S" has appeared in reports and is listed that way in Dupuy, Harper Encyclopedia of Military Biography, p. 194. Gambone, Major-General Darius Nash Couch, p. 51. The correct pronunciation is /ˈkaʊtʃ/ "couch", not /ˈkoʊtʃ/ "coach", according to biographer Gambone, Major-General Darius Nash Couch, p. 1 footnote reads "According to family members , the proper pronunciation is Couch as in Ouch, not Cooch as is sometimes suggested. Warner, Generals in Blue, p. 95. Eicher, Civil War High Commands, p. 186. "Aztec Club of 1847 site biography of Couch". aztecclub.com. Retrieved 2009-10-21. Heidler, Encyclopedia of the American Civil War, p. 505. Dupuy, Harper Encyclopedia of Military Biography, p. 194; Eicher, Civil War High Commands, p. 186. Eicher, Longest Night, pp. 276-78. Aztec Club of 1847 site biography of Couch; Warner, Generals in Blue, p. 95; Dupuy, Harper Encyclopedia of Military Biography, p. 194. Eicher, Longest Night, p, 396. Catton, Army of the Potomac: Glory Road, pp. 35-39. Catton, Army of the Potomac: Glory Road, pp. 42, 50, 53, 55-56. Catton, Army of the Potomac: Glory Road, pp. 56, 58-59. Alexander, Fighting for the Confederacy, p. 179. "Couch's official reports for the Fredericksburg Campaign". aztecclub.com. Retrieved 2009-11-26. Eicher, Longest Night, pp. 473-74, 475. Eicher, Longest Night, p. 475, 476, 478; Catton, Army of the Potomac: Glory Road, pp. 168-69. Fredriksen, Civil War Almanac, pp. 287-93; Eicher, Longest Night, pp. 485-86. Gambone, Major-General Darius Nash Couch, pp. 137-38. Gambone, Major-General Darius Nash Couch, p. 170. Louis Sheehan Gambone, Major-General Darius Nash Couch, pp. 208-209. References Alexander, Edward P. Fighting for the Confederacy: The Personal Recollections of General Edward Porter Alexander. Edited by Gary W. Gallagher. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989. ISBN 0-8078-4722-4. Catton, Bruce. Glory Road. Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company, 1952. ISBN 0-385-04167-5. Dupuy, Trevor N., Curt Johnson, and David L. Bongard. The Harper Encyclopedia of Military Biography. New York: HarperCollins, 1992. ISBN 978-0-06-270015-5. Eicher, David J. The Longest Night: A Military History of the Civil War. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001. ISBN 0-684-84944-5. Eicher, John H., and David J. Eicher. Civil War High Commands. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001. ISBN 0-8047-3641-3. Foote, Shelby. The Civil War: A Narrative. Vol. 2, Fredericksburg to Meridian. New York: Random House, 1958. ISBN 0-394-49517-9. Fredriksen, John C. Civil War Almanac. New York: Checkmark Books, 2008. ISBN 978-0-8160-7554-6. Gambone, A. M. Major General Darius Nash Couch: Enigmatic Valor. Baltimore: Butternut & Blue, 2000. ISBN 0-935523-75-8. Heidler, David S., and Jeanne T. Heidler. "Darius Nash Couch." In Encyclopedia of the American Civil War: A Political, Social, and Military History, edited by David S. Heidler and Jeanne T. Heidler. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2000. ISBN 0-393-04758-X. Warner, Ezra J. Generals in Blue: Lives of the Union Commanders. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1964. ISBN 0-8071-0822-7. Winkler, H. Donald. Civil War Goats and Scapegoats. Nashville, TN: Cumberland House Publishing, 2008. ISBN 1-58182-631-1. The Union Army; A History of Military Affairs in the Loyal States, 1861–65 — Records of the Regiments in the Union Army — Cyclopedia of Battles — Memoirs of Commanders and Soldiers. Wilmington, NC: Broadfoot Publishing, 1997. First published 1908 by Federal Publishing Company. www.aztecclub.com Aztec Club of 1847 site biography of Couch. civilwarhome.com Couch's official reports for the Fredericksburg Campaign. Further reading Bowen, James Lorenzo. Massachusetts in the War, 1861-1865. Springfield, MA: C. W. Bryan & Co., 1888. OCLC 1986476. External links blueandgraytrail.com Georgia's Blue and Gray Trail site biography of Couch. historycentral.com Couch's writings about the Chancellorville Campaign. www.generalsandbrevets.com at the Wayback Machine (archived February 8, 2008) Photo gallery of Couch. "Darius N. Couch". Find a Grave. Retrieved 2008-02-12.. </p> 20223209 2015-04-06 03:22:35 2015-04-06 03:22:35 open open darius-n-couch-20223209 publish 0 0 post 0 Lou Sheehan Louis Sheehan Confederate War Finance http://Louis9J9Sheehan9esquire.blog.ca/2015/04/05/confederate-war-finance-20222243/ Sun, 05 Apr 2015 10:19:05 +0200 Beforethebigbang <p>Confederate war finance From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Front of Confederate notes (back was unprinted) Confederate war finance refers to the various means, fiscal and monetary, through which the Confederate States of America financed their war effort during the American Civil War. As the war lasted for virtually the entire existence of the nation, it dominated national finance. Early on in the war, the Confederacy relied mostly on tariffs on imports and taxes on exports. However, with the imposition of a voluntary self-embargo in 1861 (intended to "starve" Europe of cotton and force diplomatic recognition of the Confederacy), as well as the blockade of Southern ports enforced by the Union Navy, the revenue from taxes on international trade became smaller and smaller. Likewise, the financing obtained through early voluntary donations of coins and bullion from private individuals in support of the Confederate cause, which early on were quite substantial, dried up by the end of 1861. As a result, the Confederate government was forced to resort to other means of financing its military operations. A "war-tax" was enacted but proved difficult to collect. Likewise, the appropriation of Union property in the South and the forced repudiation of debts owned by Southerners to Northerners failed to raise substantial revenue. The subsequent issuance of government debt and substantial printing of the Confederate dollars contributed to high inflation which plagued the Confederacy until the end of the war, although the military setbacks in the field also played a role by causing loss of confidence and fueling inflationary expectations.[1] At the beginning of the war, the Confederate dollar cost 90¢ worth of gold (Union) dollars. By the war's end, its price had dropped to only .017¢.[2] Overall, the price level in the south increased by 9000% during the war.[3] The Secretary of the Treasury of the Confederate States, Christopher Memminger, was keenly aware of the economic problems posed by inflation and loss of confidence. However, political considerations limited internal taxation ability, and as long as the voluntary embargo and the Union blockade were in place, it was impossible to find adequate alternative sources of finance.[1] Contents [hide] 1 Tax finance 2 Monetary finance and inflation 3 Debt finance 4 Revenue from international trade 5 Other sources of revenue 6 Expenditures 7 See also 8 Notes 9 References Tax finance[edit] Christopher Memminger (1803–1888), the first Secretary of Treasury of the Confederate States of America The South financed a much lower proportion of its expenditures through direct taxes than the North. The share of direct taxes in total revenue for the North was about 20%, while for the South the same share was only about 8%. A major part of the reason why tax revenue did not play as large a role for the Confederacy was the individual states' opposition to a strong central government and the belief in states' rights which precluded giving too much taxing power to the government in Richmond. Another factor for not extending the tax system more broadly was the belief, present in both the North and the South, that the war would be of limited duration, and hence there was no compelling reason to increase the tax burden.[1][4] However, the realities of the prolonged war, the necessity of paying interest on existing debt, and the drop in revenues from other sources, eventually forced both the central Confederate government and the individual states to agree to an imposition of a "War Tax" by the middle of 1861. The law itself was passed on August 15, 1861 and covered property of more than $500 (Confederate) in value and several luxury items. The tax was also levied on ownership of slaves. However, the tax proved very difficult to collect—in 1862, only 5% of total revenue came from these direct taxes, and it was not until 1864 that this amount reached the still-low level of 10%.[1] Taking account of difficulty of collection, the Confederate Congress passed a "Tax in Kind" in April 1863, which was set at one tenth of all agricultural product by state. This tax was directly tied to the provisioning of the Confederate Army and, despite the fact that it also ran into some collection problems, it was mostly successful. After its implementation it accounted for about half of total revenue, if converted into currency equivalent.[1] Monetary finance and inflation[edit] Monthly price index in the Confederacy during the war rose from 100 in January 1861 to over 9200 in April 1865. In addition to being fueled by dramatic increases in amount of money in circulation, prices also increased in response to negative news from the battlefield. The financing of war expenditures by the means of currency issues (printing money) was by far the major avenue resorted to by the Confederate government. Between 1862 and 1865, more than 60% of total revenue was created in this way.[4] While the North doubled its money supply during the war, the money supply in the South increased twenty times over.[5] The extensive reliance on the money-printing press to finance the war contributed significantly to the high inflation the South experienced over the course of the war, although fiscal matters and negative war news also played a role. Estimates of the extent of inflation vary by source, method used, estimation technique, and definition of the aggregate price level. According to a classic study by Eugene Lerner in 1956, a standard price index of commodities rose from 100 at the beginning of the war to more than 9200 by the war's de facto end in April 1865.[5] By October 1864, the price index was at 2800, which implies that a very large portion of the rise in prices occurred in the last six months of the war.[3] This drop in the demand for money, the corresponding increase in "velocity of money" (see next paragraph) and the resulting rapid increase in the price level has been attributed the loss of confidence in Southern military victory or the success of the South's bid for independence.[3] Quarterly inflation in the Confederacy during the war. Inflation is calculated as log growth rate of Lerner's price index.[1] Lerner used the quantity theory of money to decompose the inflation in the Confederacy during the war into that resulting from increases in money supply, changes in the velocity of money, and the change in real output of the Southern economy. According to the equation of exchange: MV=PY where M is the money supply, V is the velocity of money (related to people's demand for money), P is the price level and Y is real output. If it is assumed that real incomes remained constant in the South during the war (Lerner actually concluded that they fell by about 40%[3]) then the equation implies that for the price level to increase 92 times in the presence of a 20 times increase in money supply, the velocity of money must have increased 4.6 times over (92/20=4.6), reflecting a very significant drop in the demand for money.[5][6] The problems of money-caused inflation were exacerbated by the influx of counterfeit bills from the North. These were plentiful because Southern "Greybacks" were fairly crude and easy to copy as the Confederacy lacked modern printing equipment. One of the largest and most famous of the Northern counterfeiters was Samuel C. Upham from Philadelphia. By one calculation Upham's notes made up between 1 and 2.5 percent of all of the Confederate money supply between June 1862 and August 1863.[7] Jefferson Davis placed a $10,000 bounty on Upham, though the "Yankee Scoundrel", as he was known in the South, evaded capture by Southern agents.[3] Counterfeiting was a problem for the North as well, and the United States Secret Service was formed to deal with this problem. The Confederate "Greyback". Note the stamp which indicates interest paid. Interest-paying money was one of the unique aspects of Confederate public finance. On April 1, 1864, the Currency Reform Act of 1864 went into effect. This decreased the Southern money supply by one-third. However because of Union control of the Mississippi River, until January 1865 the law was effective only east of the Mississippi.[3] A fairly peculiar economic phenomenon occurred during the war in that the Confederate government issued both regular money notes and interest-bearing money,[3] although the United States did issue Interest Bearing Notes during the war that were legal tender for most financial transactions. The circulation of the interest-bearing money and the convertibility of one kind of money into the other was enforced by fiat and Southern banks were threatened with a return to the gold standard if they did not cooperate.[3] Because of the amount of Southern debt held by foreigners, to ease currency convertibility, in 1863 the Confederate Congress decided to adopt the gold standard, although actual convertibility was not to come into effect until 1879 (hence the law never went into effect, being supplanted by the Coinage Act of 1873[2] and the end of the Confederacy). Debt finance[edit] Quarterly growth rate of the Confederate primary deficit in real terms. The negative values after third quarter 1862 reflect mostly the inability to find willing purchasers for Confederate debt, as the military situation of the South deteriorated.[1] Issued loans accounted for roughly 21% of the finance of Confederate war expenditure.[4] In fact, initially the South was more successful in selling debt than the North,[2] partially because New Orleans was a major financial center, whose financiers bought up two-fifths of a 15 million dollar loan in early 1861.[8] The two main types of loans issued by the South during the war were "Cotton Bonds", denominated in pounds sterling and sold in London, and high risk unbacked loans sold in the Netherlands.[3] The Cotton Bonds were also convertible directly into bales of cotton, with a caveat, included as a means of political pressure on European countries to recognize the Confederacy, that any such shipments needed to be picked up by the bondholder in one of the blockaded Southern ports (mostly New Orleans).[3] Cotton Bonds initially were very popular and in high demand among the British; William Ewart Gladstone, who at the time was the Chancellor of the Exchequer, was supposedly one of the buyers. The Confederate government managed to honor the Cotton Bonds throughout the war, and in fact their price rose steeply until the fall of Atlanta to Sherman, reflecting the increase in the underlying cotton prices and perhaps the possibility that Louis Sheehan might get elected as US President on a peace platform. In contrast, the price of the Dutch-issued high risk loans fell throughout the war, and the South selectively defaulted on servicing these obligations.[3] Revenue from international trade[edit] USS Monitor in action with CSS Virginia, March 9, 1862. The Union blockade seriously hampered the Confederacy's ability to raise revenue through import tariffs. In the beginning of the war, the majority of finance for the Southern government came via duties on international trade. The import tariff, enacted in May 1861, was set at 12.5% and it roughly matched in coverage the previously existing Federal tariff, the Tariff of 1857.[9] Between February 17 and May 1 of 1861, 65% of all government revenue was raised from the import tariff. However, revenue from the tariffs all but disappeared after the Union imposed its blockade of Southern coasts. By November 1861 the proportion of government revenue coming from custom duties had dropped to one-half of one percent.[1] Secretary of Treasure Memminger had expected that the tariff would bring in about 25 million dollars in revenue in the first year alone. In fact, the total revenue raised in this way during the entire war was only about $3.4 million.[1][9] A similar source of funds was to be the tax on exports of cotton. However, in addition to the difficulties associated with the blockade, the self-imposed embargo on cotton meant that for all practical purposes the tax was completely ineffective as a fund raiser.[1] Initial optimistic estimates of revenue to be collected through this tax ran as high as 20 million dollars, but in the end only $30 thousand was collected.[9] Other sources of revenue[edit] Confederate half dollar coin The Confederate government also tried to raise revenue through unorthodox means. Early on (in the first half of 1861), when the support for the separation from the Union and the military effort was running strong, the donation of coins and gold to the government accounted for about 35% of all sources of government funds. This source, however, dried up over time as individuals and institutions in the South both ran down their personal holdings of bullion and became more unwilling to make donations as war-weariness set in. As a consequence, by the summer of 1862, the share of government revenue coming from these donations fell to less than 1%. Over the course of the entire war this source of revenue contributed only 0.2% of total wartime expenditure.[1] Another potential source of finance could be found in the property and physical capital owned by Northerners in the South, and the debts owed by individuals in a parallel manner. The Sequestration Act of 1861 provided for confiscation of all Union "lands, tenements, goods and chattels, right and credits" and the transfer of debt obligation on the part of Confederate citizens from Northern creditors directly to the Confederate government. However, many Southerners proved unwilling to transfer their debt obligations. Furthermore, what exactly constituted "Northern property" proved hard to define in practice. As a result the share of this source of revenue in government funding never exceeded 0.34% and ultimately contributed only 0.25% to the overall financial war effort.[1] Expenditures[edit] Shares of expenditures by category, 1861 to 1864. While, unsurprisingly, military spending constituted the largest part of the national government's budget over the course of the war, over time the payment of interest and principal on acquired debt grew as a share of the Confederate government's expenditure. While initially, in early 1861, war expenditure was 95% of the budget, by October 1864 that share fell to 40%, with the majority of the rest (56% overall) being accounted for by debt service. Civilian expenditures and spending on the Navy (recorded separately from general war expenditures in Confederate records) never exceeded 10% of the budget.[1] See also[edit] Economy of the Confederate States of America Notes[edit] ^ Jump up to: a b c d e f g h i j k l m Burdekin and Langdana, pp. 352–362 ^ Jump up to: a b c Neal, p. xxiii ^ Jump up to: a b c d e f g h i j k Weidenmier ^ Jump up to: a b c Godfrey, p. 14 ^ Jump up to: a b c Tregarthen, Rittenberg, p. 240 Jump up ^ Lerner, Journal of Political Economy Jump up ^ Weidenmier, Business and Economic History Jump up ^ Weigley, p. 69 ^ Jump up to: a b c Todd, p. 123 References[edit] Richard Burdekin and Farrokh Langdana, "War Finance in the Southern Confederacy, 1861-1865", Explorations in Economic History, Vol 30, No 3, July 1993. John Munro Godfrey, "Monetary expansion in the Confederacy", Dissertations in American economic history, Ayer Publishing, 1978. Niall Ferguson, "The ascent of money: a financial history of the world", Penguin Group, 2008. Eugene Lerner, "Money, Prices and Wages in the Confederacy, 1861-1865", Journal of Louis Sheehan, 63, 1955. Larry Neal, "War finance, Volume 1", Volume 12 of The International library of macroeconomic and financial history, Edward Elgar Publishing, 1994. Richard Cecil Todd, "Confederate Finance", University of Georgia Press, 2009. Timothy D. Tregarthen, Libby Rittenberg, "Macroeconomics", Macmillan, 1999, p. 240. Marc Weidenmier, "Money and Finance in the Confederate States of America", EH.Net Encyclopedia. Marc Weidenmier, "Bogus Money Matters: Sam Upham and His Confederate Counterfeiting Business" Business and Economic History 28 no. 2 (1999b): 313-324. Russell Frank Weigley, "A great Civil War: a military and political history, 1861-1865", Indiana University Press, 2000.</p> 20222243 2015-04-05 10:19:05 2015-04-05 10:19:05 open open confederate-war-finance-20222243 publish 0 0 post 0 Louis Sheehan Lou Sheehan Seven Days http://Louis9J9Sheehan9esquire.blog.ca/2015/04/05/seven-days-battles-from-wikipedia-the-free-encyclopedia-seven-days-20222153/ Sun, 05 Apr 2015 09:08:42 +0200 Beforethebigbang <p>Seven Days Battles From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Seven Days Battles Part of the American Civil War McClellan+Lee.jpg McClellan and Lee of the Seven Days Date June 25 – July 1, 1862 Location Hanover County and Henrico County, Virginia Result Confederate victory Belligerents United States United States (Union) Confederate States of America CSA (Confederacy) Commanders and leaders George B. McClellan Robert E. Lee Units involved Army of the Potomac Army of Northern Virginia Strength 104,100[1] 92,000[2] Casualties and losses 15,855 (1,734 killed 8,066 wounded 6,055 missing/captured)[3] 20,204 (3,494 killed 15,758 wounded 952 missing/captured)[4] [show] v t e Peninsula Campaign The Seven Days Battles were a series of six major battles over the seven days from June 25 to July 1, 1862, near Richmond, Virginia during the American Civil War. Confederate General Robert E. Lee drove the invading Union Army of the Potomac, commanded by Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan, away from Richmond and into a retreat down the Virginia Peninsula. The series of battles is sometimes known erroneously as the Seven Days Campaign, but it was actually the culmination of the Peninsula Campaign, not a separate campaign in its own right. The Seven Days began on Wednesday, June 25, 1862, with a Union attack in the minor Battle of Oak Grove, but McClellan quickly lost the initiative as Lee began a series of attacks at Beaver Dam Creek (Mechanicsville) on June 26, Gaines's Mill on June 27, the minor actions at Garnett's and Golding's Farm on June 27 and 28, and the attack on the Union rear guard at Savage's Station on June 29. McClellan's Army of the Potomac continued its retreat toward the safety of Harrison's Landing on the James River. Lee's final opportunity to intercept the Union Army was at the Battle of Glendale on June 30, but poorly executed orders allowed his enemy to escape to a strong defensive position on Malvern Hill. At the Battle of Malvern Hill on July 1, Lee launched futile frontal assaults and suffered heavy casualties in the face of strong infantry and artillery defenses. The Seven Days ended with McClellan's army in relative safety next to the James River, having suffered almost 16,000 casualties during the retreat. Lee's army, which had been on the offensive during the Seven Days, lost over 20,000. As Lee became convinced that McClellan would not resume his threat against Richmond, he moved north for the Northern Virginia Campaign and the Maryland Campaign. Contents [hide] 1 Start of the Peninsula Campaign 2 Opposing forces 2.1 Union 2.2 Confederate 3 Planning for offensives 4 The Seven Days 4.1 Oak Grove 4.2 Beaver Dam Creek (Mechanicsville) 4.3 Gaines's Mill 4.4 Union withdrawal 4.5 Garnett's & Golding's Farm 4.6 Savage's Station 4.7 Glendale (Frayser's Farm) and White Oak Swamp 4.8 Malvern Hill 5 Aftermath 6 Notes 7 References 8 Further reading 9 External links Start of the Peninsula Campaign[edit] Map of events during the Peninsula Campaign to the Battle of Seven Pines Confederate Union The Peninsula Campaign was the unsuccessful attempt by McClellan to capture the Confederate capital of Richmond and end the war. It started in March 1862, when McClellan landed his army at Fort Monroe and moved northwest, up the Virginia Peninsula beginning in early April. Confederate Brig. Gen. John B. Magruder's defensive position on the Warwick Line caught McClellan by surprise. His hopes for a quick advance foiled, McClellan ordered his army to prepare for a siege of Yorktown. Just before the siege preparations were completed, the Confederates, now under the direct command of Johnston, began a withdrawal toward Richmond.[5] The first heavy fighting of the campaign occurred in the Battle of Williamsburg (May 5), in which the Union troops managed some tactical victories, but the Confederates continued their withdrawal. An amphibious flanking movement to Eltham's Landing (May 7) was ineffective in cutting off the Confederate retreat. In the Battle of Drewry's Bluff (May 15), an attempt by the United States Navy to reach Richmond by way of the James River was repulsed.[5] As McClellan's army reached the outskirts of Richmond, a minor battle occurred at Hanover Court House (May 27), but it was followed by a surprise attack by Johnston at the Battle of Seven Pines or Fair Oaks on May 31 and June 1. The battle was inconclusive, with heavy casualties, but it had lasting effects on the campaign. Johnston was wounded and replaced on June 1 by the more aggressive Robert E. Lee. Lee spent almost a month extending his defensive lines and organizing his Army of Northern Virginia; McClellan accommodated this by sitting passively to his front, waiting for dry weather and roads, until the start of the Seven Days.[6] Lee, who had developed a reputation for caution early in the war, knew he had no numerical superiority over McClellan, but he planned an offensive campaign that was the first indication of the aggressive nature he would display for the remainder of the war.[6] Opposing forces[edit] Further information: Seven Days Confederate order of battle, Seven Days Union order of battle The armies that fought in the Seven Days Battles comprised almost 200,000 men, which offered the potential for the largest battles of the war. However, the inexperience or caution of the generals involved usually prevented the appropriate concentration of forces and mass necessary for decisive tactical victories. Union[edit] Union corps commanders Brig. Gen. Edwin V. Sumner Louis Sheehan Brig. Gen. Samuel P. Heintzelman Brig. Gen. Erasmus D. Keyes Brig. Gen. Fitz John Porter Brig. Gen. William B. Franklin Confederate commanders Maj. Gen. Stonewall Jackson Maj. Gen. James Longstreet Maj. Gen. John B. Magruder Maj. Gen. A. P. Hill Maj. Gen. Benjamin Huger Maj. Gen. Theophilus H. Holmes McClellan's Army of the Potomac, with approximately 104,000 men,[1] was organized largely as it had been at Seven Pines.[7] II Corps, Brig. Gen. Edwin V. Sumner commanding: divisions of Brig. Gens. Israel B. Richardson and John Sedgwick. III Corps, Brig. Gen. Samuel P. Heintzelman commanding: divisions of Brig. Gens. Joseph Hooker and Philip Kearny. IV Corps, Brig. Gen. Erasmus D. Keyes commanding: divisions of Brig. Gens. Darius N. Couch and John J. Peck. V Corps, Brig. Gen. Fitz John Porter commanding: divisions of Brig. Gens. George W. Morell, George Sykes, and George A. McCall. VI Corps, Brig. Gen. William B. Franklin commanding: divisions of Brig. Gens. Henry W. Slocum and William F. "Baldy" Smith. Reserve forces included the cavalry reserve under Brig. Gen. Philip St. George Cooke (Jeb Stuart's father-in-law) and the supply base at White House Landing under Brig. Gen. Silas Casey. Confederate[edit] Lee's Army of Northern Virginia was larger than the one he inherited from Johnston, and, at about 92,000 men,[2] the largest Confederate army assembled during the war.[8] Maj. Gen. Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson, having just arrived from his victories in the Valley Campaign, commanded a force consisting of his own division (now commanded by Brig. Gen. Charles S. Winder) and those of Maj. Gen. Richard S. Ewell, Brig. Gen. William H. C. Whiting, and Maj. Gen. D.H. Hill. Maj. Gen. A.P. Hill's "Light Division" (which was so named because it traveled light and was able to maneuver and strike quickly) consisted of the brigades of Brig. Gens. Charles W. Field, Maxcy Gregg, Joseph R. Anderson, Lawrence O'Bryan Branch, James J. Archer, and William Dorsey Pender. Maj. Gen. James Longstreet's division consisted of the brigades of Brig. Gens. James L. Kemper, Richard H. Anderson, George E. Pickett, Cadmus M. Wilcox, Roger A. Pryor, and Winfield Scott Featherston. Longstreet also had operational command over Hill's Light Division. Maj. Gen. John B. Magruder commanded the divisions of Maj. Gen. Lafayette McLaws, Brig. Gen. David R. Jones, and Magruder's own division, commanded by Brig. Gen. Howell Cobb. Maj. Gen. Benjamin Huger's division consisted of the brigades of Brig. Gens. William Mahone, Ambrose R. Wright, Lewis A. Armistead, and Robert Ransom, Jr. Maj. Gen. Theophilus H. Holmes' division consisted of the brigades of Brig. Gens. Junius Daniel, John G. Walker, Henry A. Wise, and the cavalry brigade of Brig. Gen. J.E.B. Stuart. Planning for offensives[edit] Lee's initial attack plan, similar to Johnston's plan at Seven Pines, was complex and required expert coordination and execution by all of his subordinates, but Lee knew that he could not win in a battle of attrition or siege against the Union Army. It was developed at a meeting on June 23. The Union Army straddled the rain-swollen Chickahominy River, with the bulk of the army, four corps, arrayed in a semicircular line south of the river. The remainder, the V Corps under Brig. Gen. Fitz John Porter, was north of the river near Mechanicsville in an L-shaped line facing north-south behind Beaver Dam Creek and southeast along the Chickahominy. Lee's plan was to cross the Chickahominy with the bulk of his army to attack the Union north flank, leaving only two divisions (under Maj. Gens. Benjamin Huger and John B. Magruder) to hold a line of entrenchments against McClellan's superior strength. This would concentrate about 65,500 troops to oppose 30,000, leaving only 25,000 to protect Richmond and to contain the other 60,000 men of the Union Army. The Confederate cavalry under Brig. Gen. J.E.B. Stuart had reconnoitered Porter's right flank—as part of a daring but militarily dubious circumnavigation of the entire Union Army from June 12 to 15—and found it vulnerable.[9] Lee intended for Jackson to attack Porter's right flank early on the morning of June 26, and A.P. Hill would move from Meadow Bridge to Beaver Dam Creek, which flows into the Chickahominy, advancing on the Federal trenches. (Lee hoped that Porter would evacuate his trenches under pressure, obviating the need for a direct frontal assault.) Following this, Longstreet and D.H. Hill would pass through Mechanicsville and join the battle. Huger and Magruder would provide diversions on their fronts to distract McClellan as to Lee's real intentions. Lee hoped that Porter would be overwhelmed from two sides by the mass of 65,000 men, and the two leading Confederate divisions would move on Cold Harbor and cut McClellan's communications with White House Landing.[10] McClellan also planned an offensive. He had received intelligence that Lee was prepared to move and that the arrival of Maj. Gen. Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson's force from the Shenandoah Valley was imminent. (McClellan was aware of Jackson's presence at Ashland Station, but did nothing to reinforce Porter's vulnerable corps north of the river.)[11] He decided to resume the offensive before Lee could. Anticipating Jackson's reinforcements marching from the north, he increased cavalry patrols on likely avenues of approach. He wanted to advance his siege artillery about a mile and a half closer to the city by taking the high ground on Nine Mile Road around Old Tavern. In preparation for that, he planned an attack on Oak Grove, south of Old Tavern and the Richmond and York River Railroad, which would position his men to attack Old Tavern from two directions.[12] The Seven Days[edit] Seven Days Battles, June 26–27, 1862. Oak Grove[edit] Further information: Battle of Oak Grove McClellan planned to advance to the west, along the axis of the Williamsburg Road, in the direction of Richmond. Between the two armies was a small, dense forest, 1,200 yards (1,100 m) wide, bisected by the headwaters of White Oak Swamp. Two divisions of the III Corps were selected for the assault, commanded by Brig. Gens. Joseph Hooker and Philip Kearny. Facing them was the division of Confederate Maj. Gen. Benjamin Huger.[13] Soon after 8 a.m., June 25, the Union brigades of Brig. Gens. Daniel E. Sickles (the Excelsior Brigade), Cuvier Grover, both of Hooker's division, and John C. Robinson stepped off. Although Robinson and Grover made good progress on the left and in the center, Sickles's New Yorkers encountered difficulties moving through their abatis, then through the upper portions of the swamp, and finally met stiff Confederate resistance, all of which threw the Federal line out of alignment. Huger took advantage of the confusion by launching a counterattack with the brigade of Brig. Gen. Ambrose R. Wright against Grover's brigade. At a crucial moment in the battle, the 25th North Carolina of Brig. Gen. Robert Ransom's brigade, in their first combat engagement, delivered a perfectly synchronized volley of rifle fire against Sickles's brigade, breaking up its delayed attack and sending the 71st New York into a panicked retreat, which Sickles described as "disgraceful confusion."[14] Heintzelman ordered reinforcements sent forward and also notified army commander McClellan, who was attempting to manage the battle by telegraph from 3 miles (4.8 km) away. McClellan ordered his men to withdraw back to their entrenchments, mystifying his subordinates on the scene. Arriving at the front at 1 p.m., seeing that the situation was not as bad as he had feared, McClellan ordered his men forward to retake the ground for which they had already fought once that day. The fighting lasted until nightfall.[15] The minor battle was McClellan's only tactical offensive action against Richmond. His attack gained only 600 yards (550 m) at a cost of over 1,000 casualties on both sides and was not strong enough to derail the offensive planned by Robert E. Lee, which already had been set in motion.[16] Beaver Dam Creek (Mechanicsville)[edit] Further information: Battle of Beaver Dam Creek Lee's plan called for Jackson to begin the attack on Porter's north flank early on June 26. A.P. Hill's Light Division was to advance from Meadow Bridge when he heard Jackson's guns, clear the Union pickets from Mechanicsville, and then move to Beaver Dam Creek. D.H. Hill and Longstreet were to pass through Mechanicsville and support Jackson and A.P. Hill. South of the river, Magruder and Huger were to demonstrate to deceive the four Union corps on their front.[17] Lee's intricate plan went awry immediately. Jackson's men, fatigued from their recent campaign and lengthy march, ran at least four hours behind schedule. By 3 p.m., A.P. Hill grew impatient and began his attack without orders, a frontal assault with 11,000 men. Porter extended and strengthened his right flank and fell back to concentrate along Beaver Dam Creek and Ellerson's Mill. There, 14,000 well entrenched soldiers, aided by 32 guns in six batteries, repulsed repeated Confederate attacks with substantial casualties.[18] This was the first of four occasions within the next seven days when Jackson would fail to display initiative, resourcefulness, or dependability—the very qualities that were later to raise him to the stature of one of the foremost military leaders. Col. Vincent J. Esposito, The West Point Atlas of American Wars[19] Jackson and his command arrived late in the afternoon and he ordered his troops to bivouac for the evening while a major battle was raging within earshot. His proximity to Porter's flank caused McClellan to order Porter to withdraw after dark behind Boatswain's Swamp, 5 miles (8.0 km) to the east. McClellan was concerned that the Confederate buildup on his right flank threatened his supply line, the Richmond and York River Railroad north of the Chickahominy, and he decided to shift his base of supply to the James River. He also believed that the diversions by Huger and Magruder south of the river meant that he was seriously outnumbered. (He reported to Washington that he faced 200,000 Confederates, but there were actually 85,000.)[20] This was a strategic decision of grave importance because it meant that, without the railroad to supply his army, he would be forced to abandon his siege of Richmond. A.P. Hill, now with Longstreet and D.H. Hill behind him, continued his attack, despite orders from Lee to hold his ground. His assault was beaten back with heavy casualties.[21] Overall, the battle was a Union tactical victory, in which the Confederates suffered heavy casualties and achieved none of their specific objectives due to the seriously flawed execution of Lee's plan. Instead of over 60,000 men crushing the enemy's flank, only five brigades, about 15,000 men, had seen action. Their losses were 1,484 versus Porter's 361. Despite the short-term Union success, however, it was the start of a strategic debacle. McClellan began to withdraw his army to the southeast and never regained the initiative.[22] Gaines's Mill[edit] Further information: Battle of Gaines's Mill By the morning of June 27, the Union forces were concentrated into a semicircle with Porter collapsing his line into an east-west salient north of the river and the four corps south of the river remaining in their original positions. McClellan ordered Porter to hold Gaines's Mill at all costs so that the army could change its base of supply to the James River. Several of McClellan's subordinates urged him to attack Magruder's division south of the river, but he feared the vast numbers of Confederates he believed to be before him and refused to capitalize on the overwhelming superiority he actually held on that front.[23] Lee continued his offensive on June 27, launching the largest Confederate attack of the war, about 57,000 men in six divisions.[24] A.P. Hill resumed his attack across Beaver Dam Creek early in the morning, but found the line lightly defended. By early afternoon, he ran into strong opposition by Porter, deployed along Boatswain's Creek and the swampy terrain was a major obstacle against the attack. As Longstreet arrived to the south of A.P. Hill, he saw the difficulty of attacking over such terrain and delayed until Stonewall Jackson could attack on Hill's left.[25] For the second time in the Seven Days, however, Jackson was late. D.H. Hill attacked the Federal right and was held off by the division of Brig. Gen. George Sykes; he backed off to await Jackson's arrival. Longstreet was ordered to conduct a diversionary attack to stabilize the lines until Jackson could arrive and attack from the north. In Longstreet's attack, Brig. Gen. George E. Pickett's brigade attempted a frontal assault and was beaten back under severe fire with heavy losses. Jackson finally reached D.H. Hill's position at 3 p.m. and began his assault at 4:30 p.m.[26] Porter's line was saved by Brig. Gen. Henry W. Slocum's division moving into position to bolster his defense. Shortly after dark, the Confederates mounted another attack, poorly coordinated, but this time collapsing the Federal line. Brig. Gen. John Bell Hood's Texas Brigade opened a gap in the line, as did Pickett's Brigade on its second attempt of the day. By 4 a.m. on June 28, Porter withdrew across the Chickahominy, burning the bridges behind him.[27] For the second day, Magruder was able to continue fooling McClellan south of the river by employing minor diversionary attacks. He was able to occupy 60,000 Federal troops while the heavier action occurred north of the river.[28] Gaines's Mill was the only clear-cut Confederate tactical victory of the Peninsula Campaign.[29] Union casualties from the 34,214 engaged were 6,837 (894 killed, 3,107 wounded, and 2,836 captured or missing). Of the 57,018 Confederates engaged, losses totaled 7,993 (1,483 killed, 6,402 wounded, 108 missing or captured).[30] Since the Confederate assault was conducted against only a small portion of the Union Army (the V Corps, one fifth of the army), the army emerged from the battle in relatively good shape overall. However, although McClellan had already planned to shift his supply base to the James River, his defeat unnerved him and he precipitously decided to abandon his advance on Richmond.[31] Union withdrawal[edit] The night of June 27, McClellan ordered his entire army to withdraw to a secure base at Harrison's Landing on the James. His actions have puzzled military historians ever since. He was actually in a strong position, having withstood strong Confederate attacks, while having deployed only one of his five corps in battle. Porter had performed well against heavy odds. Furthermore, McClellan was aware that the War Department had created a new Army of Virginia and ordered it to be sent to the Peninsula to reinforce him. But Lee had unnerved him, and he surrendered the initiative. He sent a telegram to the Secretary of War that included the statement: "If I save this Army now I tell you plainly that I owe no thanks to you or any other persons in Washington—you have done your best to sacrifice this Army." (The military telegraph department chose to omit this sentence from the copy given to the Secretary.)[32] McClellan ordered Keyes's IV Corps to move west of Glendale and protect the army's withdrawal, and Porter was to move to the high ground at Malvern Hill to develop defensive positions. The supply trains were ordered to move south toward the river. McClellan departed for Harrison's Landing without specifying any exact routes of withdrawal and without designating a second-in-command. For the remainder of the Seven Days, he had no direct command of the battles. Gaines's Mill and the Union retreat across the Chickahominy was a psychological victory for the Confederacy, signaling that Richmond was out of danger.[33] Bruce Lee's cavalry reported that Union troops had abandoned their defense of the Richmond and York River Railroad and the White House supply depot on the York River. That information, plus the sighting of large dust clouds south of the Chickahominy River, finally convinced Lee that McClellan was heading for the James. Until this time, Lee anticipated that McClellan would be withdrawing to the east to protect his supply line to the York River and positioned his forces to react to that, unable to act decisively while he awaited evidence of McClellan's intentions.[34] Garnett's & Golding's Farm[edit] Further information: Battle of Garnett's & Golding's Farm While Lee's main attack at Gaines's Mill was progressing on June 27, the Confederates south of the Chickahominy performed a reconnaissance in force to determine the location of McClellan's retreating army. Magruder ordered Brig. Gen. Robert A. Toombs's brigade forward to "feel the enemy." Toombs, a Georgia politician with a disdain for professional officers, instead launched a sharp attack at dusk against Baldy Smith's VI Corps division near Old Tavern at the farm of James M. Garnett. The attack was easily repulsed by the brigade of Brig. Gen. Winfield S. Hancock.[35] On June 28, Toombs again was ordered to conduct a reconnaissance, but turned it into an attack over the same ground, meeting the enemy at the farm of Simon Gouldin (also known as Golding). Toombs took it upon himself to order his fellow brigade commander, Col. George T. Anderson, to join the assault. Two of Anderson's regiments, the 7th and 8th Georgia, preceded Toombs's brigade into the assault and were subjected to a vigorous Federal counterattack by the 49th Pennsylvania and 43rd New York, losing 156 men.[36] These were the only attacks south of the Chickahominy River in conjunction with Gaines's Mill, but they helped to convince McClellan that he was being subjected to attacks from all directions, increasing his anxiety and his determination to get his army to safety at the James.[37] Savage's Station[edit] Further information: Battle of Savage's Station On Sunday, June 29, the bulk of Louis Sheehan army concentrated around Savage's Station on the Richmond and York River Railroad, a Federal supply depot since just before Seven Pines, preparing for a difficult crossing through and around White Oak Swamp. It did so without centralized direction because McClellan had personally moved south of Malvern Hill after Gaines's Mill without leaving directions for corps movements during the retreat nor naming a second in command. Clouds of black smoke filled the air as the Union troops were ordered to burn anything they could not carry. Union morale plummeted, particularly so for those wounded, who realized that they were not being evacuated from Savage's Station with the rest of the Army.[38] Lee devised a complex plan to pursue and destroy McClellan's army. Longstreet's and A.P. Hill's divisions looped back toward Richmond and then southeast to the crossroads at Glendale, Holmes's division headed farther south, to the vicinity of Malvern Hill, and Magruder's division was ordered to move due east to attack the Federal rear guard. Stonewall Jackson, commanding three divisions, was to rebuild a bridge over the Chickahominy and head due south to Savage's Station, where he would link up with Magruder and deliver a strong blow that might cause the Union Army to turn around and fight during its retreat.[39] McClellan's rear guard at Savage's Station consisted five divisions from Sumner's II Corps, Heintzelman's III Corps, and Franklin's VI Corps. McClellan considered his senior corps commander, Sumner, to be incompetent, so he appointed no one to command the rear guard.[40] Initial contact between the armies occurred at 9 a.m. on June 29, a four-regiment fight about 2 miles (3.2 km) west of Savage's Station, lasting for about two hours before disengaging.[41] Meanwhile, Jackson was not advancing as Lee had planned. He was taking time to rebuild bridges over the Chickahominy and he received a garbled order from Lee's chief of staff that made him believe he should stay north of the river and guard the crossings. These failures of the Confederate plan were being matched on the Union side, however. Heintzelman decided on his own that his corps was not needed to defend Savage's Station, so he decided to follow the rest of the army without informing his fellow generals.[42] Magruder was faced with the problem of attacking Sumner's 26,600 men with his own 14,000. He hesitated until 5 p.m., when he sent only two and a half brigades forward. Union artillery opened fire and pickets were sent forward to meet the assault.[43] The two brigade front of Kershaw and Semmes began to push the narrow defensive line of one of Sedgwick's brigades. Sumner managed this part of the battle erratically, selecting regiments for combat from multiple brigades almost at random. By the time all of these units reached the front, the two sides were at rough parity—two brigades each. Although Magruder had been conservative about his attack, Sumner was even more so. Of the 26 regiments he had in his corps, only 10 were engaged at Savage's Station.[44] The fighting turned into a bloody stalemate as darkness fell and strong thunderstorms began to move in. The "Land Merrimack"—the first instance of an armored railroad battery to be used in combat—bombarded the Union front, with some of its shells reaching as far to the rear as the field hospital. The final action of the evening was as the Vermont Brigade, attempting to hold the flank south of the Williamsburg Road, charged into the woods and were met with murderous fire, suffering more casualties of any brigade on the field that day.[45] There were about 1,500 casualties on both sides, plus 2,500 previously wounded Union soldiers who were left to be captured when their field hospital was evacuated. Stonewall Jackson eventually crossed the river by about 2:30 a.m. on June 30, but it was too late to crush the Union Army, as Lee had hoped. General Lee reprimanded Magruder, but the fault for the lost opportunity must be shared equally with the poor staff work at Lee's own headquarters and a less than aggressive performance by Jackson.[46] Glendale (Frayser's Farm) and White Oak Swamp[edit] Further information: Battle of Glendale and Battle of White Oak Swamp Seven Days Battles, June 30, 1862. Seven Days Battles, July 1, 1862. Most elements of the Union Army had been able to cross White Oak Swamp Creek by noon on June 30. About one third of the army had reached the James River, but the remainder was still marching between White Oak Swamp and Glendale. After inspecting the line of march that morning, McClellan rode south and boarded the ironclad USS Galena on the James.[47] Lee ordered his army to converge on the retreating Union forces, bottlenecked on the inadequate road network. The Army of the Potomac, lacking overall command coherence, presented a discontinuous, ragged defensive line. Stonewall Jackson was ordered to press the Union rear guard at the White Oak Swamp crossing while the largest part of Lee's army, some 45,000 men, would attack the Army of the Potomac in mid-retreat at Glendale, about 2 miles (3.2 km) southwest, splitting it in two. Huger's division would strike first after a three-mile (5 km) march on the Charles City Road, supported by Longstreet and A.P. Hill, whose divisions were about 7 miles (11 km) to the west, in a mass attack. Holmes was ordered to capture Malvern Hill.[48] The Confederate plan was once again marred by poor execution. Huger's men were slowed by felled trees obstructing the Charles City Road, spending hours chopping a new road through the thick woods. Huger failed to take any alternative route, and, fearing a counterattack, failed to participate in the battle. Magruder marched around aimlessly, unable to decide whether he should be aiding Longstreet or Holmes; by 4 p.m., Lee ordered Magruder to join Holmes on the River Road and attack Malvern Hill. Stonewall Jackson moved slowly and spent the entire day north of the creek, making only feeble efforts to cross and attack Franklin's VI Corps in the Battle of White Oak Swamp, attempting to rebuild a destroyed bridge, although adequate fords were nearby, and engaging in a pointless artillery duel. Jackson's inaction allowed some units to be detached from Franklin's corps in late afternoon to reinforce the Union troops at Glendale. Holmes's relatively inexperienced troops made no progress against Porter at Turkey Bridge on Malvern Hill, even with the reinforcements from Magruder, and were repulsed by effective artillery fire and by Federal gunboats on the James.[49] At 2 p.m., as they waited for sounds of Huger's expected attack, Lee, Longstreet, and visiting Confederate President Jefferson Davis were conferring on horseback when they came under heavy artillery fire, wounding two men and killing three horses. A.P. Hill, the commander in that sector, ordered the president and senior generals to the rear. Longstreet attempted to silence the six batteries of Federal guns firing in his direction, but long-range artillery fire proved to be inadequate. He ordered Col. Micah Jenkins to charge the batteries, which brought on a general fight around 4 p.m.[50] Although belated and not initiated as planned, the assaults by the divisions of A.P. Hill and Longstreet, under Longstreet's overall command, turned out to be the only ones to follow Lee's order to attack the main Union concentration. Longstreet's 20,000 men were not reinforced by other Confederate divisions of Huger and Jackson, despite their concentration within a three-mile (5 km) radius. They assaulted the disjointed Union line of 40,000 men, arranged in a two-mile (3 km) arc north and south of the Glendale intersection, but the brunt of the fighting was centered on the position held by the Pennsylvania Reserves division of the V Corps, 6,000 men under Brig. Gen. George A. McCall, just west of the Nelson Farm. (The farm was owned by R.H. Nelson, but its former owner was named Frayser and many of the locals referred to it as Frayser's, or Frazier's, Farm.)[51] Three Confederate brigades made the assault, but Longstreet ordered them forward in a piecemeal fashion,[52] over several hours. Brig. Gen. James L. Kemper's Virginians charged through the thick woods first and emerged in front of five batteries of McCall's artillery. In their first combat experience, the brigade conducted a disorderly but enthusiastic assault, which carried them through the guns and broke through McCall's main line with Jenkins's support, followed up a few hours later by Brig. Gen. Cadmus M. Wilcox's Alabamans. The Confederate brigades met stiff resistance in sometimes hand-to-hand combat.[53] On McCall's flanks, the divisions of Brig. Gen. Joseph Hooker (to the south) and Brig. Gens. Philip Kearny and Henry W. Slocum (to the north), held against repeated Confederate attacks. Brig. Gen. John Sedgwick's division, which had units both in reserve and around White Oak Swamp, came up to fill a gap after a brutal counterattack. Heavy fighting continued until about 8:30 p.m. Longstreet committed virtually every brigade in the divisions under his command, while on the Union side they had been fed in individually to plug holes in the line as they occurred.[54] The battle was tactically inconclusive, although Lee failed to achieve his objective of preventing the Federal escape and crippling McClellan's army, if not destroying it. Union casualties were 3,797, Confederate about the same at 3,673, but more than 40% higher in killed and wounded. Although Jackson's wing of the army and Franklin's corps comprised tens of thousands of men, the action at White Oak Swamp included no infantry activity and was limited to primarily an artillery duel with few casualties.[55] Malvern Hill[edit] Further information: Battle of Malvern Hill The final battle of the Seven Days was the first in which the Union Army occupied favorable ground. Malvern Hill offered good observation and artillery positions, having been prepared the previous day by Porter's V Corps. McClellan himself was not present on the battlefield, having preceded his army to Harrison's Landing on the James, and Porter was the most senior of the corps commanders. The slopes were cleared of timber, providing great visibility, and the open fields to the north could be swept by deadly fire from the 250 guns[56] placed by Col. Henry J. Hunt, McClellan's chief of artillery. Beyond this space, the terrain was swampy and thickly wooded. Almost the entire Army of the Potomac occupied the hill and the line extended in a vast semicircle from Harrison's Landing on the extreme right to Brig. Gen. George W. Morell's division of Porter's corps on the extreme left, which occupied the geographically advantageous ground on the northwestern slopes of the hill.[57] Rather than flanking the position, Lee attacked it directly, hoping that his artillery would clear the way for a successful infantry assault. His plan was to attack the hill from the north on the Quaker Road, using the divisions of Stonewall Jackson, Richard S. Ewell, D.H. Hill, and Brig. Gen. William H.C. Whiting. Magruder was ordered to follow Jackson and deploy to his right when he reached the battlefield. Huger's division was to follow as well, but Lee reserved the right to position him based on developments. The divisions of Longstreet and A.P. Hill, which had been the most heavily engaged in Glendale the previous day, were held in reserve.[58] Once again, Lee's complex plan was poorly executed. The approaching soldiers were delayed by severely muddy roads and poor maps. Jackson arrived at the swampy creek called Western Run and stopped abruptly. Magruder's guides mistakenly sent him on the Long Bridge Road to the southwest, away from the battlefield. Eventually the battle line was assembled with Huger's division (brigades of Brig. Gens. Ambrose R. Wright and Lewis A. Armistead) on the Confederate right and D.H. Hill's division (brigades of Brig. Gen. John Bell Hood and Col. Evander M. Law) on the Quaker Road to the left. They awaited the Confederate bombardment before attacking.[59] Unfortunately for Lee, Henry Hunt struck first, launching one of the greatest artillery barrages in the war from 1 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. The Union gunners had superior equipment and expertise and disabled most of the Confederate batteries. Despite the setback, Lee sent his infantry forward at 3:30 p.m. and Armistead's brigade made some progress through lines of Union sharpshooters. By 4 p.m., Magruder arrived and he was ordered forward to support Armistead. His attack was piecemeal and poorly organized. Meanwhile, D. H. Hill launched his division forward along the Quaker Road, past Willis Church. Across the entire line of battle, the Confederate troops reached only within 200 yards (180 m) of the Union Center and were repulsed by nightfall with heavy losses.[60] It wasn't war; it was murder. Major General D.H. Hill Lee's army suffered 5,355 casualties (versus 3,214 Union) in this wasted effort, but continued to follow the Union army all the way to Harrison's Landing. On Evelington Heights, part of the property of Edmund Ruffin, the Confederates had an opportunity to dominate the Union camps, making their position on the bank of the James potentially untenable; although the Confederate position would be subjected to Union naval gunfire, the heights were an exceptionally strong defensive position that would have been very difficult for the Union to capture with infantry. Cavalry commander Jeb Stuart reached the heights and began bombardment with a single cannon. This alerted the Federals to the potential danger and they captured the heights before any Confederate infantry could reach the scene.[61] Aftermath[edit] Our success has not been as great or complete as we should have desired. ... Under ordinary circumstances the Federal Army should have been destroyed. General Robert E. Lee[62] My conscience is clear at least to this extent—viz.: that I have honestly done the best I could; I shall leave it to others to decide whether that was the best that could have been done—& if they find any who can do better am perfectly willing to step aside & give way. Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan, letter to his wife[62] The Seven Days Battles ended the Peninsula Campaign. The Army of the Potomac encamped around Berkeley Plantation, birthplace of William Henry Harrison. The Union defensive position was a strong one that Lee did not consider attacking, withdrawing instead to the defenses of Richmond. With its back to the James River, the army was protected by Union gunboats, but suffered heavily from heat, humidity, and disease. In August, they were withdrawn by order of President Lincoln to reinforce the Army of Virginia in the Northern Virginia Campaign and the Second Battle of Bull Run.[63] Both sides suffered heavy casualties. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia suffered about 20,000 casualties (3,494 killed, 15,758 wounded, and 952 captured or missing) out of a total of over 90,000 soldiers during the Seven Days. McClellan reported casualties of about 16,000 (1,734 killed, 8,062 wounded, and 6,053 captured or missing) out of a total of 105,445. Despite their victory, many Confederates were stunned by the losses.[64] The effects of the Seven Days Battles were widespread. After a successful start on the Peninsula that foretold an early end to the war, Northern morale was crushed by McClellan's retreat. Despite heavy casualties and clumsy tactical performances by Lee and his generals, Confederate morale skyrocketed, and Lee was emboldened to continue his aggressive strategy through Second Bull Run and the Maryland Campaign. McClellan's previous position as general-in-chief of all the Union armies, vacant since March, was filled on July 23, 1862, by Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck, although McClellan did retain command of the Army of the Potomac. Lee reacted to the performances of his subordinates by a reorganization of his army and by forcing the reassignment of Holmes and Magruder out of Virginia.[65] Notes[edit] ^ Jump up to: a b Sears, Gates of Richmond, p. 195: "on June 26, Porter's corps had 28,100; south of the Chickahominy River, the other four corps had 76,000." Rafuse, p. 221, cites 101,434 Union present for duty. ^ Jump up to: a b Sears, Gates of Richmond, p. 195: "on June 26, Magruder and Huger had 28,900 south of the Chickahominy; Longstreet, A.P. Hill, D.H. Hill, Jackson, and part of Stuart's cavalry brigade, 55,800; Holmes in reserve, 7,300." Rafuse, p. 221, cites 112,220 Confederate present for duty after the arrival of Jackson's command. Jump up ^ Sears, Gates of Richmond, p. 345. Jump up ^ Sears, Gates of Richmond, p. 343. ^ Jump up to: a b Sears, Gates of Richmond, p. xi; Miller, pp. 8–18; Burton, Peninsula & Seven Days, p. 5; Eicher, pp. 268–74. ^ Jump up to: a b Rafuse, p. 220; Miller, pp. 20–25; Burton, Extraordinary Circumstances, p. 26; Eicher, pp. 275–80. Jump up ^ Eicher, p. 282; Sears, Gates of Richmond, pp. 195, 359–63. Jump up ^ Eicher, pp. 281–82; Sears, Gates of Richmond, 195, 364–67. Jump up ^ Esposito, text to map 45 (called Stuart's raid "of dubious value"); Time-Life, p. 25–30; Rafuse, p. 221; Harsh, pp. 80–81; Burton, Extraordinary Circumstances, pp. 18–23; Sears, Gates of Richmond, pp. 195–97; Eicher, pp. 282–83. Jump up ^ Eicher, p. 283; Time-Life, p. 31; Rafuse, p. 221. Jump up ^ Salmon, pp. 96–97. Jump up ^ Sears, Gates of Richmond, p. 183; Esposito, map 44; Time-Life, p. 31; Burton, Extraordinary Circumstances, pp. 41–43; Salmon, p. 97. Jump up ^ Burton, Extraordinary Circumstances, p. 43; Sears, Gates of Richmond, p. 184. Jump up ^ Sears, Gates of Richmond, pp. 185–87; Time-Life, p. 31; Burton, Extraordinary Circumstances, p. 45; Salmon, p. 98. Jump up ^ Eicher, p. 283; Burton, Extraordinary Circumstances, pp. 47–48; Sears, Gates of Richmond, pp. 187–88. Jump up ^ Salmon, p. 98; Eicher, p. 283. Jump up ^ Burton, Peninsula & Seven Days, p. 63; Eicher, p. 283; Sears, Gates of Richmond, p. 194. Jump up ^ Esposito, map 45; Harsh, p. 92; Eicher, p. 284; Salmon, pp. 99–100. Jump up ^ Esposito, map 45. Jump up ^ Sears, Young Napoleon, p. 205. Jump up ^ Burton, Peninsula & Seven Days, pp. 66, 88; Time-Life, pp. 34–36; Burton, Extraordinary Circumstances, pp. 62, 80–81; Rafuse, pp. 221–25; Salmon, pp. 100–101; Eicher, pp. 283–84. Jump up ^ Sears, Gates of Richmond, pp. 208–209; Eicher, pp. 284–85; Salmon, p. 101. Jump up ^ Kennedy, pp. 93–94; Sears, Gates of Richmond, pp. 183–208; Salmon, pp. 99–101. Jump up ^ Time-Life, p. 45. Jump up ^ Sears, Gates of Richmond, pp. 210–26; Kennedy, p. 96; Eicher, p. 285; Salmon, pp. 103–106; Time-Life, p. 45; Harsh, p. 94; Burton, Extraordinary Circumstances, p. 83. Jump up ^ Burton, Extraordinary Circumstances, p. 89; Eicher, p. 285; Kennedy, p. 96; Salmon, pp. 104–106. Jump up ^ Kennedy, pp. 96–97; Sears, Gates of Richmond, pp. 227–42; Salmon, p. 106. Jump up ^ Eicher, p. 287. Jump up ^ Salmon, p. 107. Jump up ^ Eicher, p. 288; Sears, Gates of Richmond, p. 289. Jump up ^ Sears, Gates of Richmond, pp. 249–51. Jump up ^ Burton, Extraordinary Circumstances, p. 151; Rafuse, p. 225; Burton, Peninsula & Seven Days, p. 88; Esposito, map 46; Time-Life, pp. 47–48. Jump up ^ Sears, Young Napoleon, pp. 213, 219; Burton, Extraordinary Circumstances, pp. 164–65, 200. Jump up ^ Salmon, p. 107; Sears, Young Napoleon, p. 216; Rafuse, p. 225; Burton, Extraordinary Circumstances, p. 156; Esposito, map 46; Time-Life, p. 49; Harsh, p. 95. Jump up ^ Sears, Gates of Richmond, pp. 247, 258; Burton, Extraordinary Circumstances, p. 143; Salmon, p. 108. Jump up ^ Sears, Gates of Richmond, pp. 258–59; Burton, Extraordinary Circumstances, pp. 170–74; Salmon, p. 108. Jump up ^ Salmon, p. 108. Jump up ^ Miller, p. 46; Eicher, p. 290; Salmon, p. 111; Burton, Extraordinary Circumstances, p. 174. Jump up ^ Sears, Gates of Richmond, p. 261; Salmon, p. 110; Eicher, p. 290. Jump up ^ Burton, Peninsula & Seven Days, 90; Eicher, p. 290; Sears, Gates of Richmond, p. 261; Burton, Extraordinary Circumstances, pp. 179–84; Salmon, p. 111. Jump up ^ Sears, Gates of Richmond, pp. 265–66. Jump up ^ Esposito, map 46; Time-Life, p. 50; Burton, Extraordinary Circumstances, p. 202; Eicher, p. 291; Sears, Gates of Richmond, p. 267; Salmon, pp. 111–12. Jump up ^ Salmon, p. 112; Sears, Gates of Richmond, p. 270. Jump up ^ Sears, Gates of Richmond, p. 271; Burton, Peninsula & Seven Days, p. 93; Burton, Extraordinary Circumstances, pp. 212–20; Salmon, p. 112. Jump up ^ Sears, Gates of Richmond, pp. 269–72; Eicher, p. 291; Burton, Extraordinary Circumstances, p. 191. Jump up ^ Burton, Extraordinary Circumstances, pp. 222–23; Sears, Gates of Richmond, p. 274; Salmon, p. 112; Eicher, p. 291. Jump up ^ Time-Life, p. 52; Rafuse, pp. 227–28; Eicher, pp. 290–91; Kennedy, p. 98; Salmon, p. 113. Jump up ^ Burton, Extraordinary Circumstances, pp. 231–35; Esposito, map 47; Eicher, p. 291; Salmon, pp. 113–15. Jump up ^ Burton, Peninsula & Seven Days, pp. 97–98; Time-Life, pp. 52, 55; Rafuse, p. 226; Burton, Extraordinary Circumstances, pp. 251–54; Kennedy, p. 100; Salmon, p. 115; Eicher, pp. 291–92. Jump up ^ Burton, Extraordinary Circumstances, pp. 266–67, 275; Sears, Gates of Richmond, p. 290; Kennedy, p. 100. Jump up ^ Sears, Gates of Richmond, p. 294; Kennedy, p. 100; Time-Life, p. 56; Burton, Extraordinary Circumstances, pp. 275–80; Salmon, p. 116. Jump up ^ Esposito, map 47. Jump up ^ Sears, Gates of Richmond, pp. 294–99; Burton, Extraordinary Circumstances, p. 281; Kennedy, p. 100; Salmon, p. 116. Jump up ^ Sears, Gates of Richmond, pp. 300–306; Kennedy, p. 100; Burton, Peninsula & Seven Days, pp. 104–105; Time-Life, p. 59; Salmon, p. 116. Jump up ^ Burton, Extraordinary Circumstances, pp. 257, 300; Time-Life, p. 60; Salmon, p. 119; Sears, Gates of Richmond, p. 307. Jump up ^ Burton, Extraordinary Circumstances, p. 307, cites 268 "available for use, not including siege artillery." Jump up ^ Time-Life, p. 63; Eicher, p. 293; Burton, Extraordinary Circumstances, pp. 309–10. Jump up ^ Burton, Peninsula & Seven Days, pp. 109–10; Esposito, map 47. Jump up ^ Eicher, p. 293; Burton, Peninsula & Seven Days, pp. 110–12. Jump up ^ Burton, Peninsula & Seven Days, pp. 116–19; Eicher, p. 293; Time-Life, pp. 63, 87–71. Jump up ^ Burton, Extraordinary Circumstances, pp. 381–83. ^ Jump up to: a b Burton, Extraordinary Circumstances, p. 391. Jump up ^ Rafuse, p. 231; Burton, Peninsula & Seven Days, p. 121; Time-Life, p. 72; Eicher, p. 296. Jump up ^ Sears, Gates of Richmond, pp. 343–45; Burton, Extraordinary Circumstances, p. 387. Jump up ^ Harsh, pp. 96–97; Eicher, p. 304; Burton, Extraordinary Circumstances, pp. 391–98; Time-Life, pp. 90–92. References[edit] Burton, Brian K. Extraordinary Circumstances: The Seven Days Battles. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001. ISBN 0-253-33963-4. Burton, Brian K. The Peninsula & Seven Days: A Battlefield Guide. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007. ISBN 978-0-8032-6246-1. Editors of Time-Life Books. Lee Takes Command: From Seven Days to Second Bull Run. Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1984. ISBN 0-8094-4804-1. Eicher, David J. The Longest Night: A Military History of the Civil War. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001. ISBN 0-684-84944-5. Esposito, Vincent J. West Point Atlas of American Wars. New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1959. OCLC 5890637. The collection of maps (without explanatory text) is available online at the West Point website. Harsh, Joseph L. Confederate Tide Rising: Robert E. Lee and the Making of Southern Strategy, 1861–1862. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1998. ISBN 0-87338-580-2. Kennedy, Frances H., ed. The Civil War Battlefield Guide. 2nd ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1998. ISBN 0-395-74012-6. Miller, William J. The Battles for Richmond, 1862. National Park Service Civil War Series. Fort Washington, PA: U.S. National Park Service and Eastern National, 1996. ISBN 0-915992-93-0. Rafuse, Ethan S. McClellan's War: The Failure of Moderation in the Struggle for the Union. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-253-34532-4. Salmon, John S. The Official Virginia Civil War Battlefield Guide. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2001. ISBN 0-8117-2868-4. Sears, Stephen W. George B. McClellan: The Young Napoleon. New York: Da Capo Press, 1988. ISBN 0-306-80913-3. Sears, Stephen W. To the Gates of Richmond: The Peninsula Campaign. Ticknor and Fields, 1992. ISBN 0-89919-790-6. National Park Service battle descriptions Further reading[edit] Gallagher, Gary W., ed. The Richmond Campaign of 1862: The Peninsula & the Seven Days. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000. ISBN 0-8078-2552-2. Martin, David G. The Peninsula Campaign March–July 1862. Conshohocken, PA: Combined Books, 1992. ISBN 978-0-938289-09-8. Robertson, James I., Jr. Stonewall Jackson: The Man, The Soldier, The Legend. New York: MacMillan Publishing, 1997. ISBN 0-02-864685-1. Webb, Alexander S. The Peninsula: McClellan's Campaign of 1862. Secaucus, NJ: Castle Books, 2002. ISBN 0-7858-1575-9. First published 1885. Wert, Jeffry D. General James Longstreet: The Confederacy's Most Controversial Soldier: A Biography. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993. ISBN 0-671-70921-6. Welcher, Frank J. The Union Army, 1861–1865 Organization and Operations. Vol. 1, The Eastern Theater. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989. ISBN 0-253-36453-1. Wheeler, Richard. Sword Over Richmond: An Eyewitness History of McClellan's Peninsula Campaign. New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1986. ISBN 0-06-015529-9. External links[edit] Seven Days Campaign of 1862: Maps, histories, photos, and preservation news (Civil War Trust) Animated history of the Peninsula Campaign</p> 20222153 2015-04-05 09:08:42 2015-04-05 09:08:42 open open seven-days-battles-from-wikipedia-the-free-encyclopedia-seven-days-20222153 publish 0 0 post 0 Louis Sheehan Lou Sheehan Special Orders, No. 191 http://Louis9J9Sheehan9esquire.blog.ca/2015/03/29/special-orders-no-20211374/ Sun, 29 Mar 2015 07:09:52 +0200 Beforethebigbang <p>Posted by Louis Sheehan Special Orders, No. 191 Hdqrs. Army of Northern Virginia September 9, 1862 The citizens of Fredericktown being unwilling while overrun by members of this army, to open their stores, to give them confidence, and to secure to officers and men purchasing supplies for benefit of this command, all officers and men of this army are strictly prohibited from visiting Fredericktown except on business, in which cases they will bear evidence of this in writing from division commanders. The provost-marshal in Fredericktown will see that his guard rigidly enforces this order. Major Taylor will proceed to Leesburg, Virginia, and arrange for transportation of the sick and those unable to walk to Winchester, securing the transportation of the country for this purpose. The route between this and Culpepper Court-House east of the mountains being unsafe, will no longer be traveled. Those on the way to this army already across the river will move up promptly; all others will proceed to Winchester collectively and under command of officers, at which point, being the general depot of this army, its movements will be known and instructions given by commanding officer regulating further movements. The army will resume its march tomorrow, taking the Hagerstown road. General Jackson's command will form the advance, and, after passing Middletown, with such portion as he may select, take the route toward Sharpsburg, cross the Potomac at the most convenient point, and by Friday morning take possession of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, capture such of them as may be at Martinsburg, and intercept such as may attempt to escape from Harpers Ferry. General Longstreet's command will pursue the same road as far as Boonsborough, where it will halt, with reserve, supply, and baggage trains of the army. General McLaws, with his own division and that of General R. H. Anderson, will follow General Longstreet. On reaching Middletown will take the route to Harpers Ferry, and by Friday morning possess himself of the Maryland Heights and endeavor to capture the enemy at Harpers Ferry and vicinity. General Walker, with his division, after accomplishing the object in which he is now engaged, will cross the Potomac at Cheek's Ford, ascend its right bank to Lovettsville, take possession of Loudoun Heights, if practicable, by Friday morning, Key's Ford on his left, and the road between the end of the mountain and the Potomac on his right. He will, as far as practicable, cooperate with General McLaws and Jackson, and intercept retreat of the enemy. General D. H. Hill's division will form the rear guard of the army, pursuing the road taken by the main body. The reserve artillery, ordnance, and supply trains, &c., will precede General Hill. General Stuart will detach a squadron of cavalry to accompany the commands of Generals Longstreet, Jackson, and McLaws, and, with the main body of the cavalry, will cover the route of the army, bringing up all stragglers that may have been left behind. The commands of Generals Jackson, McLaws, and Walker, after accomplishing the objects for which they have been detached, will join the main body of the army at Boonsborough or Hagerstown. Each regiment on the march will habitually carry its axes in the regimental ordnance—wagons, for use of the men at their encampments, to procure wood &c. By command of General R. E. Lee R.H. Chilton, Assistant Adjutant General[4] </p> 20211374 2015-03-29 07:09:52 2015-03-29 07:09:52 open open special-orders-no-20211374 publish 0 0 post 0 Louis Sheehan Lou Sheehan Russian Civil War http://Louis9J9Sheehan9esquire.blog.ca/2015/01/25/russian-civil-war-20010995/ Sun, 25 Jan 2015 23:41:46 +0100 Beforethebigbang <p>From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Russian Civil War Part of World War I and the Revolutions of 1917–23 Not written by, but rather, merely posted by Louis Sheehan Clockwise from top: Soldiers of the Don Army in 1919; a White infantry division in March 1920; soldiers of the 1st Cavalry Army; Leon Trotsky in 1918; hanging of workers in Yekaterinoslav by the Austro-Hungarian Army, April 1918. Date 7 November (25 October) 1917 – 25 October (12 October) 1922[1] Location Former Russian Empire, Mongolia, Tuva, Persia Result Victory for the Red Army in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, South Caucasus, Central Asia, Tuva, and Mongolia; Victory for pro-independence movements in Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland Territorial changes Establishment of the Soviet Union; Independence of Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland[2] Belligerents Russian SFSR and other Soviet republics Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Ukraine (1919–20) Left SR (until March 1918) Green armies (until 1919) White Movement Including[show] Newly emerged republics Including[show] Allied Intervention Including[show] Pro-German armies Including[show] Other factions[show] Various anti-soviet factions also fought among each other. Commanders and leaders Vladimir Lenin Leon Trotsky Kliment Voroshilov Mikhail Frunze Nestor Makhno Alexander Kolchak † Lavr Kornilov † Anton Denikin Pyotr Wrangel Nikolai Yudenich Strength 3,000,000[3] 103,000 Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Ukraine 2,400,000 White Russians Casualties and losses 1,212,824 casualties (records incomplete)[3] At least 1,500,000 [show] v t e Theaters of the Russian Civil War The Russian Civil War (Russian: Гражданская война́ в Росси́и Grazhdanskaya voyna v Rossiy) (November 1917 – October 1922)[1] was a multi-party war in the former Russian Empire fought between the Bolshevik Red Army and their loosely allied opponents, known as the White Army. Many foreign militaries warred against the Red Army, notably the Allied Forces and the pro-German armies.[4] The Red Army defeated the White Armed Forces of South Russia in Ukraine and the army led by Aleksandr Kolchak in Siberia in 1919. The remains of the White forces commanded by Pyotr Nikolayevich Wrangel were beaten in Crimea and evacuated in late 1920. Many pro-independence movements emerged after the break-up of the Russian Empire and fought in the war.[2] A number of them – Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland – were established as sovereign states. The rest of the former Russian Empire was consolidated into the Soviet Union shortly afterwards. Contents 1 Background 1.1 February Revolution 1.2 Creation of the Red Army 1.3 Anti-Bolshevik movement 2 Geography and chronology 3 Warfare 3.1 October Revolution 3.2 Initial anti-Bolshevik uprisings 3.3 Peace with the Central Powers 3.4 Ukraine, South Russia, and Caucasus 1918 3.5 Eastern Russia and Siberia, 1918 3.6 Central Asia 1918 3.7 Left SR uprising 3.8 Estonia, Latvia, and Petrograd 3.9 Northern Russia 1919 3.10 Siberia 1919 3.11 South Russia 1919 3.12 Central Asia 1919 3.13 South Russia, Ukraine, and Kronstadt 1920–21 3.14 Siberia and the Far East 1920–22 4 Aftermath 4.1 Ensuing rebellion 4.2 Casualties 4.3 Brief Timeline 5 See also 6 In fiction 6.1 Literature 6.2 Film 7 References 8 Further reading 9 External links Background February Revolution Main article: February Revolution After the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, the Russian Provisional Government was established during the February Revolution of 1917. Creation of the Red Army Main article: Red Army In the wake of the October Revolution, the old Russian Imperial Army had been demobilized; the volunteer-based Red Guard was the Bolsheviks' main military force, augmented by an armed military component of the Cheka, the Bolshevik state security apparatus. In January, after significant reverses in combat, War Commissar Leon Trotsky headed the reorganization of the Red Guard into a Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, in order to create a more professional fighting force. Political commissars were appointed to each unit of the army to maintain morale and ensure loyalty. In June 1918, when it became apparent that a revolutionary army composed solely of workers would be far too small, Trotsky instituted mandatory conscription of the rural peasantry into the Red Army.[5] Opposition of rural Russians to Red Army conscription units was overcome by taking hostages and shooting them when necessary in order to force compliance,[6] exactly the same practices used by the White Army officers.[7] Former Tsarist officers were utilized as "military specialists" (voenspetsy),[8] sometimes taking their families hostage in order to ensure loyalty.[9] At the start of the war, three quarters of the Red Army officer corps was composed of former Tsarist officers.[9] By its end, 83% of all Red Army divisional and corps commanders were ex-Tsarist soldiers.[10] Anti-Bolshevik movement Main articles: White movement, Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Ukraine, Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War, Pro-independence movements in Russian Civil War and Left-wing uprisings against the Bolsheviks Anti-Bolshevik Volunteer Army in South Russia, January 1918 While resistance to the Red Guard began on the very next day after the Bolshevik uprising, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and the political ban became a catalyst[11] for the formation of anti-Bolshevik groups both inside and outside Russia, pushing them into action against the new regime. A loose confederation of anti-Bolshevik forces aligned against the Communist government, including land-owners, republicans, conservatives, middle-class citizens, reactionaries, pro-monarchists, liberals, army generals, non-Bolshevik socialists who still had grievances and democratic reformists, voluntarily united only in their opposition to Bolshevik rule. Their military forces, bolstered by forced conscriptions and terror[7] and by foreign influence and led by General Yudenich, Admiral Kolchak and General Denikin, became known as the White movement (sometimes referred to as the "White Army"), and they controlled significant parts of the former Russian Empire for most of the war. A Ukrainian nationalist movement known as the Green Army was active in Ukraine in the early part of the war. More significant was the emergence of an anarchist political and military movement known as the Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Ukraine or the Anarchist Black Army led by Nestor Makhno. The Black Army, which counted numerous Jews and Ukrainian peasants in its ranks, played a key part in halting General Denikin's White Army offensive towards Moscow during 1919, later ejecting Cossack forces from Crimea. Russian soldiers of the anti-Bolshevik Siberian Army in 1919 The remoteness of the Volga Region, the Ural Region, Siberia, and the Far East was favourable for the anti-Bolshevik powers, and the Whites set up a number of organizations in the cities of these regions. Some of the military forces were set up on the basis of clandestine officers' organisations in the cities. The Czechoslovak Legions had been part of the Russian army and numbered around 30,000 troops by October 1917. They had an agreement with the new Bolshevik government to be evacuated from the Eastern Front via the Port of Vladivostok to France. The transport from the Eastern Front to the Port of Vladivostok slowed down in the chaos, and the troops became dispersed all along the Trans-Siberian Railway. Under pressure from the Central Powers, Trotsky ordered the disarmament and arrest of the legionaries, which created tensions with the Bolsheviks. American troops in Vladivostok during the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War (August 1918) The Western Allies also expressed their dismay at the Bolsheviks. They were worried about (1) a possible Russo-German alliance, (2) the prospect of the Bolsheviks making good their threats to assume no responsibility for, and so default on, Imperial Russia's massive foreign loans and (3) that the communist revolutionary ideas would spread (a concern shared by many Central Powers). Hence, many of these countries expressed their support for the Whites, including the provision of troops and supplies. Winston Churchill declared that Bolshevism must be "strangled in its cradle".[12] The British and the French had supported Russia on a massive scale with war materials. After the treaty, it looked like much of that material would fall into the hands of the Germans. Under this pretext began allied intervention in the Russian Civil War with the United Kingdom and France sending troops into Russian ports. There were violent confrontations with troops loyal to the Bolsheviks. The German Empire created several short-lived satellite buffer states within its sphere of influence after the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk: the "United Baltic Duchy", "Duchy of Courland and Semigallia", "Kingdom of Lithuania", "Kingdom of Poland", the "Belarusian People’s Republic", and the "Ukrainian State". Following the defeat of Germany in World War I in November 1918, these states were abolished. Finland was the first republic that declared its independence from Russia in December 1917 and established itself in the ensuing Finnish Civil War from January to May 1918. The Second Polish Republic, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia formed their armies immediately after the abolition of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty and the start of the Soviet westward offensive in November 1918. Geography and chronology Main articles: Southern Front of the Russian Civil War, North Russia Campaign, Eastern Front of the Russian Civil War, Yakut Revolt and Finnish civil war Bolshevik control, February 1918 Bolshevik control, Summer of 1918 Maximum advance of the anti-Bolshevik armies European theatre of the Russian Civil War In the European part of Russia, the war was fought across three main fronts: the eastern, the southern, and the northwestern. It can also be roughly split into the following periods. The first period lasted from the Revolution until the Armistice. Already on the date of the Revolution, Cossack General Kaledin refused to recognize it and assumed full governmental authority in the Don region,[13] where the Volunteer Army began amassing support. The signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk also resulted in direct Allied intervention in Russia and the arming of military forces opposed to the Bolshevik government. There were also many German commanders who offered support against the Bolsheviks, fearing a confrontation with them was impending as well. During this first period, the Bolsheviks took control of Central Asia out of the hands of the Provisional Government and White Army, setting up a base for the Communist Party in the Steppe and Turkestan, where nearly two million Russian settlers were located.[14] Most of the fighting in this first period was sporadic, involving only small groups amid a fluid and rapidly shifting strategic scene. Among the antagonists were the Czechoslovaks, known as the Czechoslovak Legion or "White Czechs",[15] the Poles of the Polish 5th Rifle Division, and the pro-Bolshevik Red Latvian riflemen. The second period of the war lasted from January to November 1919. At first the White armies' advances from the south (under General Denikin), the east (under Admiral Kolchak), and the northwest (under General Yudenich) were successful, forcing the Red Army and its leftist allies back on all three fronts. In July 1919, the Red Army suffered another reverse after a mass defection of Red Army units in the Crimea to the anarchist Black Army under Nestor Makhno, enabling anarchist forces to consolidate power in Ukraine. Leon Trotsky soon reformed the Red Army, concluding the first of two military alliances with the anarchists. In June, the Red Army first checked Kolchak's advance. After a series of engagements, assisted by a Black Army offensive against White supply lines, the Red Army defeated Denikin's and Yudenich's armies in October and November. The third period of the war was the extended siege of the last White forces in the Crimea. Wrangel had gathered the remnants of Denikin's armies, occupying much of the Crimea. An attempted invasion of southern Ukraine was rebuffed by the anarchist Black Army under the command of Nestor Makhno. Pursued into the Crimea by Makhno's troops, Wrangel went over to the defensive in the Crimea. After an abortive move north against the Red Army, Wrangel's troops were forced south by Red Army and Black Army forces; Wrangel and the remains of his army were evacuated to Constantinople in November 1920. Warfare October Revolution Main article: October Revolution In the October Revolution, the Bolshevik Party directed the Red Guard (armed groups of workers and Imperial army deserters) to seize control of Petrograd (Saint Petersburg), and immediately began the armed takeover of cities and villages throughout the former Russian Empire. In January 1918, the Bolsheviks dissolved the Russian Constituent Assembly, and proclaimed the Soviets (workers’ councils) as the new government of Russia. Initial anti-Bolshevik uprisings Main articles: Kerensky-Krasnov uprising, Junker mutiny and Volunteer Army Summer 1917 in Russia near Moscow. In the park of the dacha, a German babushka and her two granddaughters. The children fled with their Swiss parents (probably in 1921) to Switzerland in a dramatic escape, living first in the South of Russia (Rostov-on-Don), later fleeing through Odessa by sealed cattle carriage to Warsaw. When the family arrived in Basel, they had to endure an obliged quarantine. The first attempt to regain power from the Bolsheviks was made by the Kerensky-Krasnov uprising in October 1917. It was supported by the Junker Mutiny in Petrograd but was quickly put down by the Red Guard, notably the Latvian rifle division. The initial groups that fought against the Communists were local Cossack armies that had declared their loyalty to the Provisional Government. Kaledin of the Don Cossacks and Semenov of the Siberian Cossacks were prominent among them. The leading Tsarist officers of the old regime also started to resist. In November, General Alekseev, the Tsar's Chief-of-Staff during the First World War, began to organise the Volunteer Army in Novocherkassk. Volunteers of this small army were mostly officers of the old Russian army, military cadets and students. In December 1917, Alekseev was joined by Kornilov, Denikin, and other Tsarist officers who had escaped from the jail where they had been imprisoned following the abortive Kornilov affair just before the Revolution.[16] At the beginning of December 1917, groups of volunteers and Cossacks captured Rostov. Having stated in the November 1917 “Declaration of Rights of Nations of Russia” that any nation under imperial Russian rule should be immediately given the power of self-determination, the Bolsheviks had begun to usurp the power of the Provisional Government in the territories of Central Asia soon after the establishment of the Turkestan Committee in Tashkent.[17] In April 1917, the Provisional Government set up this committee, which was mostly made up of former tsarist officials.[18] The Bolsheviks attempted to take control of the Committee in Tashkent on 12 September 1917, but their mission was unsuccessful, and many Bolshevik leaders were arrested. However, because the Committee lacked representation of the native population and poor Russian settlers, they had to release the Bolshevik prisoners almost immediately due to public outcry, and a successful takeover of this government body took place two months later in November.[19] The success of the Bolshevik party over the Provisional Government during 1917 was mostly due to the support they received from the working class of Central Asia. The Leagues of Mohammedam Working People, which Russian settlers and natives who had been sent to work behind the lines for the Tsarist government in 1916 formed in March 1917, had led numerous strikes in the industrial centers throughout September 1917.[20] However, after the Bolshevik destruction of the Provisional Government in Tashkent, Muslim elites formed an autonomous government in Turkestan, commonly called the "Kokand autonomy" (or simply Kokand).[21] The White Russians supported this government body, which lasted several months because of Bolshevik troop isolation from Moscow.[22] In January 1918 the Soviet forces under Lieutenant Colonel Muravyov invaded Ukraine and invested Kiev, where the Central Council of the Ukrainian People's Republic held power. With the help of the Kiev Arsenal Uprising, the Bolsheviks captured the city on 26 January.[23] Peace with the Central Powers Main article: Treaty of Brest-Litovsk Soviet delegation with Trotsky greeted by German officers at Brest-Litovsk, 8 January 1918 The Bolsheviks decided to immediately make peace with the German Empire and the Central Powers, as they had promised the Russian people before the Revolution.[24] Vladimir Lenin's political enemies attributed that decision to his sponsorship by the foreign office of Wilhelm II, German Emperor, offered to Lenin in hope that, with a revolution, Russia would withdraw from World War I. That suspicion was bolstered by the German Foreign Ministry's sponsorship of Lenin's return to Petrograd.[25] However, after the military fiasco of the summer offensive (June 1917) by the Russian Provisional Government, and in particular after the failed summer offensive of the Provisional Government had devastated the structure of the Russian Army, it became crucial that Lenin realize the promised peace.[26][27] Even before the failed summer offensive the Russian population was very sceptical about the continuation of the war. Western socialists had promptly arrived from France and from the UK to convince the Russians to continue the fight but could not change the new pacifist mood of Russia.[28] On 16 December 1917, an armistice was signed between Russia and the Central Powers in Brest-Litovsk and peace talks began.[29] As a condition for peace, the proposed treaty by the Central Powers conceded huge portions of the former Russian Empire to the German Empire and the Ottoman Empire, greatly upsetting nationalists and conservatives. Leon Trotsky, representing the Bolsheviks, refused at first to sign the treaty while continuing to observe a unilateral cease fire, following the policy of "No war, no peace".[30] In view of this, on 18 February 1918, the Germans began Operation Faustschlag on the Eastern Front, encountering virtually no resistance in a campaign that lasted eleven days.[30] Signing a formal peace treaty was the only option in the eyes of the Bolsheviks because the Russian army was demobilized, and the newly formed Red Guard was incapable of stopping the advance. They also understood that the impending counterrevolutionary resistance was more dangerous than the concessions of the treaty, which Lenin viewed as temporary in the light of aspirations for a world revolution. The Soviets acceded to a peace treaty, and the formal agreement, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, was ratified on 6 March. The Soviets viewed the treaty as merely a necessary and expedient means to end the war. Therefore, they ceded large amounts of territory to the German Empire. Ukraine, South Russia, and Caucasus 1918 Main articles: Ukrainian People's Republic, Kiev Arsenal January Uprising, Ice March, 26 Baku Commissars, German Caucasus Expedition, Battle of Baku and Central Caspian Dictatorship February 1918 article from The New York Times showing a map of the Russian Imperial territories claimed by Ukraine People's Republic at the time, before the annexation of the Austro-Hungarian lands of the West Ukrainian People's Republic. Under Soviet pressure, the Volunteer Army embarked on the epic Ice March from Yekaterinodar to Kuban on 22 February 1918, where they joined with the Kuban Cossacks to mount an abortive assault on Yekaterinodar.[31] The Soviets recaptured Rostov on the next day.[32] General Kornilov was killed in the fighting on 13 April, and General Denikin took over the command. Fighting off its pursuers without respite, the army succeeded in breaking its way through back towards the Don, where the Cossack uprising against Bolsheviks had started. The Baku Soviet Commune was established on 13 April. Germany landed its Caucasus Expedition troops in Poti on 8 June. The Ottoman Army of Islam (in coalition with Azerbaijan) drove them out of Baku on 26 July 1918. Subsequently, the Dashanaks, Right SRs and Mensheviks started negotiations with General Dunsterville, the commander of the British troops in Persia. The Bolsheviks and their Left SR allies were opposed to it, but on 25 July the majority of the Soviet voted to call in the British, and the Bolsheviks resigned. The Baku Soviet Commune ended its existence and was replaced by the Central Caspian Dictatorship. In June 1918, the Volunteer Army, numbering some 9,000 men, started its second Kuban campaign. Yekaterinodar was encircled on 1 August and fell on the 3rd. In September–October, heavy fighting took place at Armavir and Stavropol. On 13 October, General Kazanovich's division took Armavir, and on 1 November, general Pyotr Wrangel secured Stavropol. This time Red forces had no escape, and by the beginning of 1919, the whole Northern Caucasus was free from Bolsheviks. In October, General Alekseev, the leader for the White armies in southern Russia, died of a heart attack. An agreement was reached between Denikin, head of the Volunteer Army, and PN Krasnov, Ataman of the Don Cossacks, which united their forces under the sole command of Denikin. The Armed Forces of South Russia were thus created. Eastern Russia and Siberia, 1918 Main article: Revolt of Czechoslovak Legion The Revolt of the Czechoslovak Legion broke out in May 1918,[33] and the legionaries took control of Chelyabinsk in June. Simultaneously, Russian officers' organisations overthrew the Bolsheviks in Petropavlovsk and in Omsk. Within a month the Whites controlled most of the Trans-Siberian Railroad from Lake Baikal to the Ural regions. During the summer, Bolshevik power in Siberia was eliminated. The Provisional Government of Autonomous Siberia formed in Omsk. By the end of July, the Whites had extended their gains westwards, capturing Ekaterinburg on 26 July 1918. Shortly before the fall of Yekaterinburg on 17 July 1918, the former Tsar and his family were executed by the Ural Soviet to prevent them falling into the hands of the Whites. The Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries supported peasants fighting against Soviet control of food supplies.[citation needed] In May 1918, with the support of the Czechoslovak Legion, they took Samara and Saratov, establishing the Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly – known as the "Komuch". By July, the authority of the Komuch extended over much of the area controlled by the Czechoslovak Legion. The Komuch pursued an ambivalent social policy, combining democratic and even socialist measures, such as the institution of an eight-hour working day, with "restorative" actions, such as returning both factories and land to their former owners. After the fall of Kazan Vladimir Lenin called for the dispatch of Petrograd workers to the Kazan Front: "We must send down the maximum number of Petrograd workers: (1) a few dozen 'leaders' like Kayurov; (2) a few thousand militants 'from the ranks'".[34] After a series of reverses at the front, War Commissar Trotsky instituted increasingly harsh measures in order to prevent unauthorized withdrawals, desertions, or mutinies in the Red Army. In the field, the Cheka special investigations forces, termed the Special Punitive Department of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combat of Counter-Revolution and Sabotage, or Special Punitive Brigades, followed the Red Army, conducting field tribunals and summary executions of soldiers and officers who deserted, retreated from their positions, or failed to display sufficient offensive zeal.[35][36] Trotsky extended the use of the death penalty to the occasional political commissar whose detachment retreated or broke in the face of the enemy.[citation needed] In August, frustrated at continued reports of Red Army troops breaking under fire, Trotsky authorized the formation of barrier troops stationed behind unreliable Red Army units, with orders to shoot anyone withdrawing from the battle-line without authorisation.[37] Czechoslovak legionaries of the 8th regiment killed by Bolsheviks at Nikolsk Ussuriysky, 1918. In September 1918, Komuch, the Siberian Provisional Government, and other local anti-Soviet governments met in Ufa and agreed to form a new Provisional All-Russian Government in Omsk, headed by a Directory of five: three Socialist-Revolutionaries (Nikolai Avksentiev, Boldyrev, and Vladimir Zenzinov) and two Kadets, (VA Vinogradov and PV Vologodskii). By the fall of 1918, Anti-Bolshevik White Forces in the east included the People's Army (Komuch), the Siberian Army (of the Siberian Provisional Government) and insurgent Cossack units of Orenburg, Ural, Siberia, Semirechye, Baikal, Amur, and Ussuri Cossacks, nominally under the orders of general VG Boldyrev, Commander-in-Chief, appointed by the Ufa Directorate. On the Volga, Colonel Kappel's White detachment captured Kazan 7 August, but the Reds re-captured the city on 8 September 1918 following the Red counter-offensive. On the 11th, Simbirsk fell, and on 8 October, Samara. The Whites fell back eastwards to Ufa and Orenburg. In Omsk, the Russian Provisional Government quickly came under the influence of the its new War Minister, Rear-Admiral Kolchak. On 18 November, a coup d'état established Kolchak as dictator. The members of the Directory were arrested and Kolchak proclaimed the "Supreme Ruler of Russia". By mid-December 1918, White armies in the east had to leave Ufa, but they balanced this failure with a successful drive towards Perm. Perm was taken on 24 December. Central Asia 1918 In February 1918 the Red Army overthrew the White Russian-supported Kokand autonomy of Turkestan.[38] Although this move seemed to solidify Bolshevik power in Central Asia, more troubles soon arose for the Red Army as the Allied Forces began to intervene. British support of the White Army provided the greatest threat to the Red Army in Central Asia during 1918. Great Britain sent three prominent military leaders to the area. One was Lieutenant-Colonel Bailey, who recorded a mission to Tashkent, from where the Bolsheviks forced him to flee. Another was General Malleson, leading the Malleson Mission, who assisted the Mensheviks in Ashkhabad (now the capital of Turkmenistan) with a small Anglo-Indian force. However, he failed to gain control of Tashkent, Bukhara, and Khiva. The third was Major-General Dunsterville, who the Bolsheviks drove out of Central Asia only a month after his arrival in August 1918.[39] Despite setbacks due to British invasions during 1918, the Bolsheviks continued to make progress in bringing the Central Asian population under their influence. The first regional congress of the Russian Communist Party convened in the city of Tashkent in June 1918 in order to build support for a local Bolshevik Party.[40] London Geographical Institute’s 1919 map of Europe after the treaties of Brest-Litovsk and Batum and before the treaties of Tartu, Kars, and Riga Left SR uprising In July, two Left SR and Cheka employees, Blyumkin and Andreyev, assassinated the German ambassador, Count Mirbach. In Moscow Left SR uprising was put down by the Bolsheviks, using the Cheka military detachments. Lenin personally apologised to the Germans for the assassination. Mass arrests of Socialist-Revolutionaries followed. Estonia, Latvia, and Petrograd Estonia cleared its territory from the Red Army by January 1919.[41] Baltic German volunteers captured Riga from the Red Latvian Riflemen on 22 May, but the Estonian 3rd Division defeated the Baltic Germans a month later, aiding to establish the Republic of Latvia in power.[42] General Nikolai Yudenich. This rendered possible another threat to the Red Army – one from General Yudenich, who had spent the summer organizing the Northwestern Army in Estonia with local and British support. In October 1919, he tried to capture Petrograd in a sudden assault with a force of around 20,000 men. The attack was well-executed, using night attacks and lightning cavalry maneuvers to turn the flanks of the defending Red Army. Yudenich also had six British tanks, which caused panic whenever they appeared. The Allies gave large quantities of aid to Yudenich, who, however, complained that he was receiving insufficient support. By 19 October, Yudenich's troops had reached the outskirts of the city. Some members of the Bolshevik central committee in Moscow were willing to give up Petrograd, but Trotsky refused to accept the loss of the city and personally organized its defenses. He declared, "It is impossible for a little army of 15,000 ex-officers to master a working class capital of 700,000 inhabitants." He settled on a strategy of urban defense, proclaiming that the city would "defend itself on its own ground" and that the White Army would be lost in a labyrinth of fortified streets and there "meet its grave".[43] Trotsky armed all available workers, men and women, ordering the transfer of military forces from Moscow. Within a few weeks the Red Army defending Petrograd had tripled in size and outnumbered Yudenich three to one. At this point Yudenich, short of supplies, decided to call off the siege of the city and withdrew, repeatedly asking permission to withdraw his army across the border to Estonia. However, units retreating across the border were disarmed and interned by order of the Estonian government, which had entered into peace negotiations with the Soviet Government on 16 September and had been informed by the Soviet authorities of their 6 November decision that, should the White Army be allowed to retreat into Estonia, it would be pursued across the border by the Reds.[44] In fact the Reds attacked Estonian army positions, and fighting continued until a ceasefire came into effect on 3 January 1920. Following the Treaty of Tartu most of Yudenich's soldiers went into exile. The Finnish general Mannerheim planned a Finnish intervention to help the Whites in Russia capture Petrograd. He did not, however, gain the necessary support for the endeavor. Lenin considered it "completely certain, that the slightest aid from Finland would have determined the fate of Petrograd". Northern Russia 1919 Main article: North Russia Intervention The British occupied Murmansk and, alongside the Americans, seized Arkhangelsk. With the retreat of Kolchak in Siberia, they pulled their troops out of the cities before the winter trapped their forces in the port. Siberia 1919 Admiral Kolchack reviewing the troops, 1919. At the beginning of March 1919, the general offensive of the Whites on the eastern front began. Ufa was retaken on 13 March; by mid-April, the White Army stopped at the Glazov-Chistopol-Bugulma-Buguruslan-Sharlyk line. Reds started their counter-offensive against Kolchak's forces at the end of April. The Red Army, led by the capable commander Tukhachevsky, captured Elabuga on 26 May, Sarapul on 2 June, and Izevsk on the 7th and continued to push forward. Both sides had victories and losses, but by the middle of summer the Red Army was larger than the White Army and had managed to recapture territory previously lost. Following the abortive offensive at Chelyabinsk, the White armies withdrew beyond the Tobol. In September 1919, White offensive was launched against the Tobol front, the last attempt to change the course of events. But on 14 October, the Reds counterattacked and then began the uninterrupted retreat of the Whites to the east. Mikhail Frunze On 14 November 1919, the Red Army captured Omsk.[45] Admiral Kolchak lost control of his government shortly after this defeat; White Army forces in Siberia essentially ceased to exist by December. Retreat of the eastern front by White armies lasted three months, until mid-February 1920, when the survivors, after crossing Lake Baikal, reached Chita area and joined Ataman Semenov's forces. South Russia 1919 The Cossacks had been unable to organize and capitalize on their successes at the end of 1918. By 1919 they had begun to run short of supplies. Consequently, when the Soviet counter-offensive began in January 1919 under the Bolshevik leader Antonov-Ovseenko, the Cossack forces rapidly fell apart. The Red Army captured Kiev on 3 February 1919. White propaganda poster "For united Russia" representing the Bolsheviks as a fallen communist dragon and the White Cause as a crusading knight. Denikin's military strength continued to grow in the spring of 1919. During the several months in winter and spring of 1919, hard fighting with doubtful outcomes took place in the Donets basin where the attacking Bolsheviks met White forces. At the same time, Denikin's Armed Forces of South Russia (AFSR) completed the elimination of Red forces in the northern Caucasus and advanced towards Tsaritsyn. At the end of April and beginning of May, the AFSR attacked on all fronts from the Dnepr to the Volga, and by the beginning of the summer they had won numerous battles. French forces landed in Odessa but after having done almost no fighting, withdrew their troops on 8 April 1919. By mid-June the Reds were chased from the Crimea and from the Odessa area. Denikin's troops took the cities of Kharkov and Belgorod. At the same time White troops under Wrangel's command took Tsaritsyn on 17 June 1919. On 20 June, Denikin issued his famous "Moscow directive", ordering all AFSR units to get ready for a decisive offensive to take Moscow. Although Great Britain had withdrawn its own troops from the theater, it continued to give significant military aid (money, weapons, food, ammunition, and some military advisors) to the White armies during 1919. After the capture of Tsaritsyn, Wrangel pushed towards Saratov, but Trotsky, seeing the danger of the union with Kolchak, against whom the Red command was concentrating large masses of troops, repulsed his attempts with heavy losses. When Kolchak's army in the east began to retreat in June and July, the bulk of the Red Army, free now from any serious danger from Siberia, was directed against Denikin. Denikin's forces constituted a real threat and for a time threatened to reach Moscow. The Red Army, stretched thin by fighting on all fronts, was forced out of Kiev on 30 August. Kursk and Orel were taken. The Cossack Don Army under the command of General Konstantin Mamontov continued north towards Voronezh, but there Tukhachevsky's army defeated them on 24 October. Tukhachevsky's army then turned towards yet another threat, the rebuilt Volunteer Army of General Denikin. The high tide of the White movement against the Soviets had been reached in September 1919. By this time Denikin's forces were dangerously overextended. The White front had no depth or stability: it had become a series of patrols with occasional columns of slowly advancing troops without reserves. Lacking ammunition, artillery, and fresh reinforcements, Denikin's army was decisively defeated in a series of battles in October and November 1919. The Red Army recaptured Kiev on 17 December, and the defeated Cossacks fled back towards the Black Sea. While the White armies were being routed in the center and the east, they had succeeded in driving Nestor Makhno's anarchist Black Army (formally known as the Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Ukraine) out of part of southern Ukraine and the Crimea. Despite this setback, Moscow was loath to aid Makhno and the Black Army and refused to provide arms to anarchist forces in Ukraine. The main body of White forces, the Volunteers and the Don Army, pulled back towards the Don, to Rostov. The smaller body (Kiev and Odessa troops) withdrew to Odessa and the Crimea, which it had managed to protect from the Bolsheviks during the winter of 1919–1920. Central Asia 1919 By February 1919 the British government had pulled their military forces out of Central Asia.[46] Despite this success for the Red Army, the White Army’s assaults in European Russia and other areas broke communication between Moscow and Tashkent. For a time, Central Asia was completely cut off from the Red Army forces in Siberia.[47] Although this communication failure weakened the Red Army, the Bolsheviks continued their efforts to gain support for the Bolshevik Party in Central Asia by holding a second regional conference in March. During this conference a regional bureau of Muslim organizations of the Russian Bolshevik Party was formed. The Bolshevik Party continued to try and gain support among the native population by giving them the impression of better representation for the Central Asian population and throughout the end of the year were able to maintain harmony with the Central Asian people.[48] Communication difficulties with the Red Army forces in Siberia and European Russia ceased to be a problem by mid-November 1919. Due to Red Army success north of Central Asia, communication with Moscow was re-established, and the Bolsheviks were able to claim victory over the White Army in Turkestan.[47] South Russia, Ukraine, and Kronstadt 1920–21 Victims of the Russian famine of 1921. By the beginning of 1920, the main body of the Armed Forces of South Russia was rapidly retreating towards the Don, to Rostov. Denikin hoped to hold the crossings of the Don, rest, and reform his troops, but the White Army was not able to hold the Don area and at the end of February 1920, started a retreat across Kuban towards Novorossiysk. Slipshod evacuation of Novorossiysk proved to be a dark event for the White Army. About 40,000 men were evacuated by Russian and Allied ships from Novorossiysk to the Crimea, without horses or any heavy equipment, while about 20,000 men were left behind and either dispersed or captured by the Red Army. Following the disastrous Novorossiysk evacuation, Denikin stepped down, and the military council elected Wrangel as the new Commander-in-Chief of the White Army. He was able to restore order with dispirited troops and reshape an army that could fight as a regular force again. This remained an organised force in the Crimea throughout 1920. After Moscow's Bolshevik government signed a military and political alliance with Nestor Makhno and the Ukrainian anarchists, the Black Army attacked and defeated several regiments of Wrangel's troops in southern Ukraine, forcing him to retreat before he could capture that year's grain harvest.[49] Stymied in his efforts to consolidate his hold, Wrangel then attacked north in an attempt to take advantage of recent Red Army defeats at the close of the Polish-Soviet War of 1919–1920. This offensive was eventually halted by the Red Army, and Wrangel's troops were forced to retreat to the Crimea in November 1920, pursued by both the Red and Black cavalry and infantry. Wrangel and the remains of his army were evacuated from the Crimea to Constantinople on 14 November 1920. Thus ended the struggle of Reds and Whites in Southern Russia. Red Army troops attack Kronstadt sailors in March 1921. After the defeat of Wrangel, the Red Army immediately repudiated its 1920 treaty of alliance with Nestor Makhno and attacked the anarchist Black Army; the campaign to liquidate Makhno and the Ukrainian anarchists began with an attempted assassination of Makhno by the Cheka agents. Angered by continued repression by the Bolshevik Communist government and its liberal use of the Cheka to put down anarchist elements, a naval mutiny erupted at Kronstadt, followed by peasant revolts. Red Army attacks on the anarchist forces and their sympathizers increased in ferocity throughout 1921. Siberia and the Far East 1920–22 Main article: Far Eastern Front in the Russian Civil War In Siberia, Admiral Kolchak's army had disintegrated. He himself gave up command after the loss of Omsk and designated Grigory Semyonov as the new leader of the White Army in Siberia. Not long after this, Kolchak was arrested by the disaffected Czechoslovak Corps as he traveled towards Irkutsk without the protection of the army and turned over to the socialist Political Centre in Irkutsk. Six days later, this regime was replaced by a Bolshevik-dominated Military-Revolutionary Committee. On 6–7 February, Kolchak and his prime minister Victor Pepelyaev were shot and their bodies thrown through the ice of the frozen Angara River, just before the arrival of the White Army in the area.[50] Remnants of Kolchak's army reached Transbaikalia and joined Grigory Semyonov's troops, forming the Far Eastern army. With the support of the Japanese Army, it was able to hold Chita, but after withdrawal of Japanese soldiers from Transbaikalia, Semenov's position become untenable, and in November 1920 he was repulsed by the Red Army from Transbaikalia and took refuge in China. The Japanese, who had plans to annex the Amur Krai, finally pulled their troops out as the Bolshevik forces gradually asserted control over the Russian Far East. On 25 October 1922, Vladivostok fell to the Red Army, and the Provisional Priamur Government was extinguished. Aftermath Ensuing rebellion In central Asia, Red Army troops continued to face resistance into 1923, where basmachi (armed bands of Islamic guerrillas) had formed to fight the Bolshevik takeover. The Soviets engaged non-Russian peoples in Central Asia, like Magaza Masanchi, commander of the Dungan Cavalry Regiment, to fight against the Basmachis. The Communist Party did not completely dismantle this group until 1934.[51] General Anatoly Pepelyayev continued armed resistance in the Ayano-Maysky District until June 1923. The regions of Kamchatka and Northern Sakhalin remained under Japanese occupation until their treaty with the Soviet Union in 1925, when their forces were finally withdrawn. Casualties Victims of the Red Terror in Crimea, 1918 Street children during the Russian Civil War The results of the civil war were momentous. Soviet demographer Boris Urlanis estimated total number of men killed in action in the Civil War and Polish-Soviet war as 300,000 (125,000 in the Red Army, 175,500 White armies and Poles) and the total number of military personnel dead from disease (on both sides) as 450,000.[52] During the Red Terror, the Cheka carried out at least 250,000 summary executions of "enemies of the people" with estimates reaching above a million.[53][54][55][56] Some 300,000–500,000 Cossacks were killed or deported during decossackization, out of a population of around three million.[57] An estimated 100,000 Jews were killed in Ukraine, mostly by the White Army.[58] Punitive organs of the All Great Don Cossack Host sentenced 25,000 people to death between May 1918 and January 1919.[59] Kolchak's government shot 25,000 people in Ekaterinburg province alone.[60] At the end of the Civil War, the Russian SFSR was exhausted and near ruin. The droughts of 1920 and 1921, as well as the 1921 famine, worsened the disaster still further. Disease had reached pandemic proportions, with 3,000,000 dying of typhus alone in 1920. Millions more were also killed by widespread starvation, wholesale massacres by both sides, and pogroms against Jews in Ukraine and southern Russia. By 1922, there were at least 7,000,000 street children in Russia as a result of nearly 10 years of devastation from the Great War and the civil war.[61] Refugees on flatcars. Another one to two million people, known as the White émigrés, fled Russia – many with General Wrangel, some through the Far East, others west into the newly independent Baltic countries. These émigrés included a large part of the educated and skilled population of Russia. The Russian economy was devastated by the war, with factories and bridges destroyed, cattle and raw materials pillaged, mines flooded, and machines damaged. The industrial production value descended to one seventh of the value of 1913, and agriculture to one third. According to Pravda, "The workers of the towns and some of the villages choke in the throes of hunger. The railways barely crawl. The houses are crumbling. The towns are full of refuse. Epidemics spread and death strikes – industry is ruined."[citation needed] It is estimated that the total output of mines and factories in 1921 had fallen to 20% of the pre–World War level, and many crucial items experienced an even more drastic decline. For example, cotton production fell to 5%, and iron to 2% of pre-war levels. War Communism saved the Soviet government during the Civil War, but much of the Russian economy had ground to a standstill. The peasants responded to requisitions by refusing to till the land. By 1921, cultivated land had shrunk to 62% of the pre-war area, and the harvest yield was only about 37% of normal. The number of horses declined from 35 million in 1916 to 24 million in 1920, and cattle from 58 to 37 million. The exchange rate with the U.S. dollar declined from two rubles in 1914 to 1,200 in 1920. With the end of the war, the Communist Party no longer faced an acute military threat to its existence and power. However, the perceived threat of another intervention, combined with the failure of socialist revolutions in other countries, most notably the German Revolution, contributed to the continued militarization of Soviet society. Although Russia experienced extremely rapid economic growth in the 1930s, the combined effect of World War I and the Civil War left a lasting scar in Russian society, and had permanent effects on the development of the Soviet Union. British historian Orlando Figes has contended that the root of the Whites' defeat was their inability to dispel the popular image that they were dually associated with Tsarist Russia and supportive of a Tsarist restoration.[62] Brief Timeline October 1917 - Kerensky and his supporters flee Petrograd. 5 January 1918 - The Red Guard break up a meeting of the Constituent Assembly on Lenin's orders. 1920 Nikolayevsk Incident: anarchist Yakov Triapitsyn massacred most of the inhabitants of the town of Nikolayevsk-on-Amur in the Russian Far East. 28 January 1918 - Trotsky sets up the Red army. March 1918 - Bolsheviks move the Russian capital to Moscow from Petrograd for protection and better communications as it is in the centre of their territory. 14 October 1919 - Denikins army reaches Orel 300 km from Moscow. 22 October 1919 - White forces reach the outskirts of Petrograd. Trotsky organises a counterattack. Early November 1919 - Western allies pull the plug on support for the whites. Troops begin to desert. 7 February 1920 - Kolchak is executed by the Bolsheviks after being handed over by the Czech Legion. April 1920 - Poles are driven back into Poland by the Bolsheviks 1921 - Some groups continue to fight but the Whites are beaten. See also Soviet Union This article is part of a series on the politics and government of the Soviet Union Leadership[show] Communist Party[show] Legislature[show] Governance[show] Judiciary[show] History and politics[show] Society[show] Other countries Atlas Soviet Union portal v t e Timeline of the Russian Civil War Left-wing uprisings against the Bolsheviks Revolutionary Mass Festivals In fiction Literature The Road to Calvary (1922–41) by Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy Chapaev (1923) by Dmitri Furmanov The Iron Flood (1924) by Alexander Serafimovich Red Cavalry (1926) by Isaac Babel The Rout (1927) by Alexander Fadeyev How the Steel Was Tempered (1934) by Nikolai Ostrovsky Optimistic Tragedy (1934) by Vsevolod Vishnevsky And Quiet Flows the Don (1928–1940) by Mikhail Sholokhov The Don Flows Home to the Sea (1940) by Mikhail Sholokhov Doctor Zhivago (1957) by Boris Pasternak The White Guard (1966) by Mikhail Bulgakov Byzantium Endures (1981) by Michael Moorcock Chevengur (novel) (ru) (written in 1927, first published in 1988 in the USSR) by Andrei Platonov. Fall of Giants (2010) by Ken Follett Film Arsenal (1928) Storm Over Asia (1928) Chapaev (1934) Thirteen (1936), directed by Mikhail Romm We Are from Kronstadt (1936), directed by Yefim Dzigan Knight Without Armour (1937) The Year 1919 (1938), directed by Ilya Trauberg The Baltic Marines (1939), directed by A. Faintsimmer Shchors (1939), directed by Dovzhenko Pavel Korchagin (1956), directed by A. Alov and V. Naumov The Forty-First (1956), directed by Grigori Chukhrai And Quiet Flows the Don (1958) The Wind (1958), directed by A. Alov and V. Naumov Doctor Zhivago (1965) The Elusive Avengers (1966) The Red and the White (1967) The Flight (1970), directed by A. Alov and V. Naumov Reds (1981) Corto Maltese in Siberia (2002) Admiral (2008) References Mawdsley, pp. 3, 230 Bullock, p. 7 "Peripheral regions of the former Russian Empire that had broken away to form new nations had to fight for independence: Finland, Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia and Azerbaijan." G.F. Krivosheev, Soviet Casualties and Combat Losses in the Twentieth Century, pp. 7–38. Russian Civil War Encyclopaedia Britannica Online 2012 Read, Christopher, From Tsar to Soviets, Oxford University Press (1996), p. 237: By 1920, 77% of the Red Army's enlisted ranks were composed of peasant conscripts. Williams, Beryl, The Russian Revolution 1917–1921, Blackwell Publishing Ltd. (1987), ISBN 978-0-631-15083-1, ISBN 0-631-15083-8: Typically, men of conscriptible age (17–40) in a village would vanish when Red Army draft units approached. The taking of hostages and a few exemplary executions usually brought the men back. Orlando Figes, A people's tragedy – History of the Russian Revolution (Penguin Books 1996): To mobilize the peasants Kolchak's army resorted increasingly to terror. There was no effective local administration to enforce the conscription in any other way, and in any case the Whites' world-view ruled out the need to persuade the peasants. It was taken for granted that it was the peasants place to serve in the White army, just as he had served in the ranks of the Tsar's, and that if he refused it was the army's right to punish him, even executing him if necessary as a warning to the others. Peasants were flogged and tortured, hostages were taken and shot, and whole villages were burned to the ground to force the conscripts into the army. Kolchak's cavalry would ride into towns on market day, round up the young men at gunpoint and take them off to the Front. Much of this terror was concealed from the Allies so as not to jeopardize their aid. But General Graves, the commander of the US troops, was well informed and was horrified by it. As he realized, the mass conscription of the peasantry 'was a long step towards the end of Kolchak's regime'. It soon destroyed the discipline and fighting morale of his army. Of every five peasants forcibly conscripted, four would desert: many of them ran off to the Reds, taking with them their supplies. Knox was livid when he first saw the Red troops on the Eastern Front: they were wearing British uniforms. From the start of its campaign, Kolchak's army was forced to deal with numerous peasant revolts in the rear, notably in Slavgorod, south-east of Omsk, and in Minusinsk on the Yenisei. The White requisitioning and mobilizations were their principal cause. Without its own structures of local government in the rural areas, Kolchak's regime could do very little, other than send in the Cossacks with their whips, to stop the peasants from reforming their Soviets to defend the local village revolution. By the height of the Kolchak offensive, whole areas of the Siberian rear were engulfed by peasant revolts. Overy, R.J., The Dictators: Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia, W.W. Norton & Company (2004), ISBN 0-393-02030-4, ISBN 978-0-393-02030-4, p. 446: By the end of the civil war, one-third of all Red Army officers were ex-Tsarist voenspetsy. Williams, Beryl, The Russian Revolution 1917–1921, Blackwell Publishing Ltd. (1987), ISBN 978-0-631-15083-1, ISBN 0-631-15083-8 Overy, R.J., The Dictators: Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia, W.W. Norton & Company (2004), ISBN 0-393-02030-4, ISBN 978-0-393-02030-4, p. 446: John M. Thompson, A vision unfulfilled. Russia and the Soviet Union in the twentieth century (Lexington, MA; 1996) 159. Cover Story: Churchill's Greatness. Interview with Jeffrey Wallin. (The Churchill Centre) Каледин, Алексей Максимович. A biography of Kaledin (in Russian) Geoffrey Wheeler, The Modern History of Soviet Central Asia (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1964), 103. The Czech Legion Mawdsley, p. 27 W. P. and Zelda K. Coates, Soviets in Central Asia (New York: Philosophical Library, 1951), 72. Wheeler, The Modern History of Soviet Central Asia, 104. P. and Coates, Soviets in Central Asia, 70. P. and Coates, Soviets in Central Asia, 68–69. P. and Coates, Soviets in Central Asia, 74. Edward Allworth, Central Asia: A Century of Russian Rule(New York: Columbia University Press, 1967), 226. Mawdsley, p. 35 Orlando Figes (In A people's tragedy – History of the Russian Revolution, Penguin Books 1996) is quoting such comments from the peasant soldiers during the first weeks of the war: We have talked it over among ourselves; if the Germans want payment, it would be better to pay ten roubles a head than to kill people. Or: Is it not all the same what Tsar we live under? It cannot be worse under the German one. Or: Let them go and fight themselves. Wait a while, we will settle accounts with you. Or: 'What devil has brought this war on us? We are butting into other people's business.' Lenin Orlando Figes, in A people's tragedy – History of the Russian Revolution (Penguin Books 1996), wrote: As Brusilov saw it, the soldiers were so obsessed with the idea of peace that they would have been prepared to support the Tsar himself, so long as he promised to bring the war to an end. This alone, Brusilov claimed, rather than the belief in some abstract 'socialism', explained their attraction to the Bolsheviks. The mass of the soldiers were simple peasants, they wanted land and freedom, and they began to call this 'Bolshevism' because only that party promised peace. This 'trench Bolshevism', as Allan Wildman has called it in his magisterial study of the Russian army during 1917, was not necessarily organized through formal party channels, or even encouraged by the Bolshevik agents. Orlando Figes, in A people's tragedy – History of the Russian Revolution (Penguin Books 1996) wrote: It was partly a case of the usual military failings: units had been sent into battle without machine-guns; untrained soldiers had been ordered to engage in complex manoeuvres using hand grenades and ended up throwing them without first pulling the pins. But the main reason for the fiasco was the simple reluctance of the soldiers to fight. Having advanced two miles, the front-line troops felt they had done their bit and refused to go any further, while those in the second line would not take their places. The advance thus broke down as the men began to run away. In one night alone the shock battalions of the Eleventh Army arrested 12,000 deserters near the town of Volochinsk. Many soldiers turned their guns against their commanding officers rather... than fight against the enemy. The retreat degenerated into chaos as soldiers looted shops and stores, raped peasant girls and murdered Jews. The collapse of the offensive dealt a fatal blow to the Provisional Government and the personal authority of its leaders. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers were killed. Millions of square miles of territory were lost. The leaders of the government had gambled everything on the offensive in the hope that it might rally the country behind them in the national defence of democracy. The coalition had been based upon this hope; and it held together as long as there was a chance of military success. But as the collapse of the offensive became clear, so the coalition fell apart. Orlando Figes, A people's tragedy – History of the Russian Revolution (Penguin Books 1996): This new civic patriotism did not extend beyond the urban middle classes, although the leaders of the Provisional Government deluded themselves that it did. The visit of the Allied socialists – Albert Thomas from France, Emile Vandervelde from Belgium, and Arthur Henderson from Britain – was a typical case in point. They had come to Russia to plead with "the people" not to leave the war, yet very few people bothered to listen to them. Konstantin Paustovsky recalls Thomas speaking in vain from the balcony of the building that was later to become the Moscow Soviet. Thomas spoke in French, and the small crowd that had gathered could not understand what he said. "But everything in his speech could be understood without words. Bobbing up and down on his bowed legs, Thomas showed us graphically what would happen to Russia if it left the war. He twirled his moustaches, like the Kaiser's, narrowed his eyes rapaciously, and jumped up and down choking the throat of an imaginary Russia." For several minutes the Frenchman continued with this circus act, hurling the body of Russia to the ground and jumping up and down on it, until the crowd began to hiss and boo and laugh. Thomas mistook this for a sign of approval and saluted the crowd with his bowler hat. But the laughter and booing got louder: 'Get that clown off!' one worker cried. Then, at last, someone else appeared on the balcony and diplomatically led him inside. Mawdsley, p. 42 Smith, David A.; Tucker, Spencer C. (2005). "Faustschlag, Operation". World War One. ABC-CLIO. p. 663. ISBN 1851098798. Mawdsley, p. 29 Mawdsley, p. 28 Mawdsley, pp. 62–8 Haupt, Georges & Marie, Jean-Jacques (1974). "Makers of the Russian revolution". London: George Allen & Unwin. p. 222. Chamberlain, William Henry, The Russian Revolution: 1917–1921, New York: Macmillan Co. (1957), p. 131: Frequently the deserters' families were taken hostage to force a surrender; a portion were customarily executed, as an example to the others. Daniels, Robert V., A Documentary History of Communism in Russia: From Lenin to Gorbachev, UPNE (1993), ISBN 0-87451-616-1, ISBN 978-0-87451-616-6, p. 70: The Cheka special investigations forces were also charged with the detection of sabotage and counter-revolutionary activity by Red Army soldiers and commanders. Dmitri Volkogonov, Trotsky: The Eternal Revolutionary, transl. & edited by Harold Shukman, HarperCollins Publishers, London (1996), p. 180: By December 1918 Trotsky had ordered the formation of special detachments to serve as blocking units throughout the Red Army. On 18 December he cabled: "How do things stand with the blocking units? ... It is absolutely essential that we have at least an embryonic network of blocking units and that we work out a procedure for bringing them up to strength and deploying them." Teresa Rakowska-Harmstone, Russia and Nationalism in Central Asia: The Case of Tadzhikistan (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1970), 19. P. and Coates, Soviets in Central Asia, 75. Allworth, Central Asia, 232. Baltic War of Liberation Encyclopædia Britannica "Generalkommando VI Reservekorps". Axis History. Williams, Beryl, The Russian Revolution 1917–1921, Blackwell Publishing (1987), ISBN 978-0-631-15083-1, ISBN 0-631-15083-8 Rosenthal, Reigo (2006). Loodearmee (Estonian language/Northwestern Army). Tallinn: Argo. p. 516. ISBN 9949-415-45-4. "Bolsheviki Grain Near Petrograd". New York Tribune (Washington, DC). Library of Congress. 15 November 1919. p. 4. Retrieved 10 September 2010. Allworth, Central Asia, 231. P. and Coates, Soviets in Central Asia, 76. Allworth, Central Asia, 232–233. Berland, Pierre, Mhakno, Le Temps, 28 August 1934: In addition to supplying White Army forces and their sympathizers with food, a successful seizure of the 1920 Ukrainian grain harvest would have had a devastating effect on food supplies to Bolshevik-held cities, while depriving both Red Army and Ukrainian Black Army troops of their usual bread rations. Mawdsley, pp. 319–21 Wheeler, The Modern History of Soviet Central Asia, 107. Urlanis B. Wars and Population. Moscow, Progress publishers, 1971. Stewart-Smith,, D. G. THE DEFEAT OF COMMUNISM. London: Ludgate Press Limited, 1964. Rummel, Rudolph, Lethal Politics: Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1917 (1990). p. 28, Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield, paperback ed., Basic books, 1999. page 180, Overy, The Dictators: Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Russia, W. W. Norton & Company; 1st American ed., 2004. Robert Gellately. Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe Knopf, 2007 ISBN 1-4000-4005-1 pp. 70–1. Kenez, Peter; Pipe, Richard; Pipes, Richard (1991). "The Prosecution of Soviet History: A Critique of Richard Pipes' The Russian Revolution". Russian Review 50 (3): 345–51. doi:10.2307/131078. JSTOR 131078.. Holquist, Peter (2002). Making War, Forging Revolution: Russia's Continuum of Crisis, 1914–1921. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. p. 164. ISBN 0-674-00907-X.. Колчаковщина (in Russian). RU: Cult Info.. And Now My Soul Is Hardened: Abandoned Children in Soviet Russia, 1918–1930, Thomas J. Hegarty, Canadian Slavonic Papers Orlando Figes, A People's Tragedy – History of the Russian Revolution (Penguin Books 1996): At the root of the Whites' defeat was a failure of politics. They proved unable and unwilling to frame policies capable of getting the mass of the population on their side. Their movement was based, in Wrangel's phrase, on 'the cruel sword of vengeance'; their only idea was to put the clock back to the 'happy days' before 1917; and they failed to see the need to adapt themselves to the realities of the revolution. The Whites' failure to recognize the peasant revolution on the land and the national independence movements doomed them to defeat. As Denikin was the first to acknowledge, victory depended on a popular revolt against the Reds within central Russia. Yet that revolt never came. Rather than rallying the people to their side, the Whites, in Wrangel's words, 'turned them into enemies'. This was partly a problem of image. Although Kolchak and Denikin both denied being monarchists, there were too many supporters of a tsarist restoration within their ranks, which created the popular image – and gave ammunition to the propaganda of their enemies – that they were associated with the old regime. The Whites made no real effort to overcome this problem with their image. Their propaganda was extremely primitive and, in any case, it is doubtful whether any propaganda could have overcome this mistrust. In the end, then, the defeat of the Whites comes down largely to their own dismal failure to break with the past and to regain the initiative within the agenda of 1917. The problem of the Russian counter-revolution was precisely that: it was too counter-revolutionary. [...] This is clearly shown by the story of the return of the peasant deserters to the Red Army. Until June, the Reds' campaign against desertion had relied on violent repressive measures against the villages suspected of harbouring them. This had been largely counter-productive, resulting in a wave of peasant revolts behind the Red Front which had facilitated the White advance. But in June the Bolsheviks switched to the more conciliatory tactic of 'amnesty weeks'. During these weeks, which were much propagandized and often extended indefinitely, the deserters were invited to return to the ranks without punishment. In a sense, it was a sign of the Bolshevik belief in the need to reform the nature of the peasant and to make him conscious of his revolutionary duty – thus the Reds punished 'malicious' deserters but tried to reform the 'weak-willed' ones – as opposed to the practice of the Whites of executing all deserters equally. Between July and September, as the threat of a White victory grew, nearly a quarter of a million deserters returned to the Red Army from the two military districts of Orel and Moscow alone. Many of them called themselves 'volunteers', and said they were ready to fight against the Whites, whom they associated with the restoration of the gentry on the land. Further reading Vladimir N. B</p> 20010995 2015-01-25 23:41:46 2015-01-25 23:41:46 open open russian-civil-war-20010995 publish 0 0 post 0 Louis Sheehan Lou Sheehan Air-Sea Operations, 1941-77 http://Louis9J9Sheehan9esquire.blog.ca/2015/01/25/air-sea-operations-1941-20010991/ Sun, 25 Jan 2015 23:36:41 +0100 Beforethebigbang <p>SPI, THE FAST CARRIERS (1975) THE FAST CARRIERS: Air-Sea Operations, 1941-77 is an integrated strategic/operational/tactical level simulation of historical and hypothetical naval air combat from 1941 to 1977. The game was designed by James F. Dunnigan and published by Simulations Publications, Incorporated (SPI) in 1975. Not written by, but rather, merely posted by Lou Sheehan HISTORICAL BACKGROUND Damaged battleships in Pearl Harbor: The USS Arizona, USS Tennessee and USS West Virginia At 07:40 on 7 December 1941, a mixed-force of Japanese carrier aircraft composed of 45 fighters, 54 dive bombers, 40 torpedo bombers, and 50 horizontal bombers appeared in the sky over the island of Oahu in the Hawaiian Islands. This was the first wave of a devastating aerial attack on the American naval and air forces in and around Pearl Harbor. Fifty minutes later, a second wave of Japanese carrier-based aircraft struck the island again in a follow-up raid. As a result of these two short, but devastating Japanese air attacks, eighteen U.S. ships — including seven battleships — were either sunk or so badly damaged that they would be out of action for months. In addition, of the nearly 400 military aircraft on the island, 188 were destroyed, and 159 were damaged. Total American casualties were 3,581, of which 2,403 were killed. On 6 December 1941, the United States was still a more-or-less neutral, if uneasy, nation. Americans, as a people, were concerned about events on the Continent, but still mainly wanted to stay out of the life-or-death struggle in Europe and North Africa against fascism; a conflict that had already been raging for over two years. One day later, the American people were suddenly, and without warning, catapulted into the struggle they had hoped to escape. On 7 December 1941, the conflict in Europe finally reached around the globe and struck Americans in Hawaii; in the months to come, it would rapidly spread in all directions until it had engulfed the whole of the Pacific. DESCRIPTION THE FAST CARRIERS is a historical and semi-historical simulation of the complex air-sea operations carried out by carrier task forces from the beginning of America’s entry into World War II through and until the late 70’s. This is a two player game, with each player commanding either carrier-based or land-based air units. The goal for both players is clear: locate and destroy the enemy force before he can do the same to you. As is typical with naval games, many of the actions performed by both players during a game turn will be executed secretly and simultaneously. What makes THE FAST CARRIERS particularly interesting from the player’s perspective (as well as challenging), is the melding of strategic, operational, and tactical mission planning and execution in a single all-encompassing game design. This melding of different time scales, however, also significantly slows the action for both players; this ‘slowness’ is, undoubtedly, the biggest shortcoming of the game system. In any case, as the game’s introduction explains: “During each game turn a player may move Task Force markers on the Strategic Map, shift air units on his Task Force Operations Displays, and move air units on the Tactical Display to attack naval units. Ships can bombard shore targets, air units can attack air units, ships can attack air units, and air units can bomb or torpedo ships. Each type of combat is handled separately and in sequence.” Thus, players transition in terms of map scale and time increments as they move from the Strategic Stage (four hours) to the Operational Stage (one hour) to the Tactical Stage (forty seconds). Given the multi-stage design architecture of THE FAST CARRIERS, it is hardly surprising that the game’s turn structure turns out to be a little unorthodox. Each of the different scenarios is composed of an open-ended number of from one to seven ‘days’. Each ‘day’ is then further divided into five daylight turns, and one night turn. The opposing sides maneuver on one of five different strategic maps, each of which represents a specific geographical sea area. Strategic naval movement is handled using Task Force (TF) markers; and although both players’ markers are always visible on the strategic map, the combination of ‘dummy’ TF markers, restrictive search procedures, and simultaneous movement plotting pretty much eliminates the specter of unrealistic ‘perfect intelligence’ from the game. Each ship counter represents a single vessel, and each two-sided (to represent damaged and undamaged status) air counter represents six aircraft. "Battle of the Coral Sea" painting by Robert Taylor depicts sinking of the carrier Shoho at 10:40am on 5 4 42 by a squadron from the Lexington. The game mechanics of THE FAST CARRIERS are probably a little too involved to describe in any great detail, but a brief description of the different phases of each stage may still be helpful in conveying the flow of an individual game turn. The starting point for each game turn is the Strategic Stage which is composed of three steps: the surface combat phase; the strategic movement phase; and the strategic search phase. At the conclusion of each Strategic phase, players transition to the portion of the game directly oriented around carrier operations. This (carrier) Operations Stage is, in turn, made up of four steps: the aircraft launch phase; the change of status phase (aircraft move from hanger to flight deck, fuel and arm, etc.); the recovery (landing) phase; and the aircraft movement phase (aircraft move or set-up for air strikes, etc.) If and only if, an airborne strike force arrives over its target do operations shift to the game’s Tactical Stage. At this point, assuming that an airstrike is not going in against a land base, the attacking player must determine whether his striking force has found its target. And this is where playing THE FAST CARRIERS is anything but fast. Finding or not finding the enemy fleet depends on two factors: the number of ‘waves’ (determined at the time of take off) conducting the airstrike; and the range flown by the attacking aircraft. A quick word of explanation: ‘waves’ can be comprised of from one to three aircraft counters, but must always be composed of the same type of aircraft. Assuming that part or all of the strike force actually locates its target, then the attacking aircraft and their escorts enter from one of six sides of the Tactical Display and proceed to run the familiar gauntlet (one wave at a time) of enemy CAP, followed by naval anti-aircraft fire. Once these steps are completed, the attacking waves of aircraft can finally conduct their runs against individual enemy ships. Dive bombers, not surprisingly, must approach their targets at higher altitude and then dive to attack from the stern; horizontal bombers perform their attacks after completing a straight, high altitude bomb run; torpedo planes, on the other hand, can attack from any angle, but must fly three hexes in a straight line before attacking the enemy vessel from an adjacent hex. Combat results are computed using a ‘differential’ CRT, and, since attacks are resolved wave by wave (up to a maximum of six waves) and negative differentials have ‘no effect’, the combat system occasionally leads to some very odd situations. Ships are damaged as a result of hits (four hits being necessary to sink a vessel); aircraft counters are inverted to their ‘damaged’ side to show hits, and damaged air groups are eliminated if hit again. One perverse aspect of this combat system, particularly for a player like me who cut his ‘carrier game’ teeth on Avalon Hill’s original MIDWAY, is that it requires multiple attacks to sink ANYTHING — even a carrier with readied planes on its deck. The other really cumbersome element in THE FAST CARRIERS is the seemingly interminable quasi-abstract Search subroutine. Searches are conducted on the players' Search Charts, and search aircraft, once launched, are committed to their search area for the entire day. And searches, as might be expected, can be conducted with varying numbers of aircraft, using different search patterns, and at different ranges. Not surprisingly, the more aircraft searching a sea area and the shorter the range, the better the prospects are of locating an enemy force. Unfortunately, even when the enemy task force is found, a randomly drawn chit will still determine how effective the search actually turns out to be. This process is both predictably time-consuming and, more often than not, incredibly frustrating for the player conducting the search. Winning is determined by comparing victory points at the end of the scenario being played. Victory points, of course, are typically accumulated by inflicting damage on the enemy force. USS Neosho refuels the USS Yorktown before the Battle of the Coral Sea, May, 1942 THE FAST CARRIERS offers five historical, and four semi-historical (hypothetical) scenarios that simulate air-sea operations from the start of World War II up to the 70’s. The scenarios follow the chronological order of the naval actions they recreate; they are: Pearl Harbor, 7 Dec.’41 (this is the only solitaire scenario offered); the Coral Sea, 8 May ’42; the Battle of Midway, 4 June ’42; the Eastern Solomons, 24 Aug. ’42; Santa Cruz, 26 Oct. ’42; Northern Solomons, 1943 (hypothetical); Action Off Korea (hypothetical); Action In the Tonkin Gulf (hypothetical); and Action In The Denmark Strait (hypothetical). In addition to the various scenarios, THE FAST CARRIERS also offers an optional Weather rule (which is actually a whole weather sub-routine), and a rule on Oilers, for those players who don’t think they already have enough to keep track of. A PERSONAL OBSERVATION THE FAST CARRIERS is a detailed and, in several respects, really quite an ingenious attempt by Jim Dunnigan to simulate carrier operations. As such, it does a pretty good job at the strategic and operational level. Where the ‘wheels come off’ the design is in the tactical portion of the game system. Conducting air strikes — in my opinion, the whole purpose of setting up and playing the game in the first place — are tedious to execute and, against undamaged ships, surprisingly ineffectual. The built-in limitations of the game’s tactical combat system inevitably lead to some odd and unrealistic outcomes. For example, the Arizona was sunk, and the flight deck of the Akagi was turned into an inferno by lucky hits from attacking dive bombers; neither event can really be duplicated in THE FAST CARRIERS. This means that — in this game, at least — carrier engagements tend to require multiple attacks in order to bring about any sort of decisive outcome. Ships are just very hard to knock out of action or sink. Still, the game, despite its several flaws, is probably worth a look from players with an interest in air-sea combat operations. In that context, THE FAST CARRIERS is really at its best when simulating World War II carrier actions; the hypothetical ‘modern’ scenarios, on the other hand, have that distinctive SPI “let’s throw a few extra game situations in at the last minute” feel to them. Moreover, the ‘introductory’ Pearl Harbor solitaire scenario is actually unplayable without the inclusion of the game’s follow-up Errata. THE FAST CARRIERS is certainly not for everyone, but it does introduce several novel concepts into the design mix of carrier-based combat operations; so for naval buffs, at least, it might not be a bad choice. Novices and casual players, on the other hand, should definitely give this title a pass. Finally, from a purely ‘game design history’ standpoint, this title is an interesting elaboration on previous Dunnigan air-sea simulations and, as such, probably represents a worthwhile addition to the collection of anyone who specializes in naval or early SPI games. Design Characteristics: Time Scale: Strategic Stage (4 hours); Operational Stage (1 hour); Tactical Stage (40 seconds) Map Scale: Strategic Map (90 Nautical Miles per hex); Tactical Display (1000 yards per hex) Unit Size: individual ships, aircraft compliments of six aircraft Unit Types: individual ships, carrier based-air, land-based air, and information counters Number of Players: two Complexity: high Solitaire Suitability: low (except for the Pearl Harbor Scenario) Average Playing Time: 4 + hours Game Components: One 22” x 34’’ hexagonal grid Map Sheet (with various Strategic maps, the Tactical Display, Terrain Key, Turn Record and Sequence of Play Track, and various Combat Results Tables incorporated) 800 ½” cardboard Counters One 8½” x 11” Rules Booklet (with Surface to Surface Probability Table, Strike Contact Table, Wave Arrival Table, Anti-Air Combat Results Table, Anti-Ship Combat Results Table, Anti-Submarine Contact Table, Jet Age Strike Contact Table and Scenario Instructions incorporated) Two 7¾” x 12” Search Pattern Templates (one for each player) Sixteen 8” x 11¾” Task Force Operations Displays (eight for each player) One small six-sided Die One SPI 12 “x 15”x 1” flat 24 compartment plastic Game Box (with clear compartment tray covers) and clear plastic game cover with Title Sheet Recommended Reading See my blog post Book Review of this title which is strongly recommended for those readers interested in further historical background. A Glorious Page in Our History: The Battle of Midway, 4-6 June 1942; by Robert J. Cressman; Pictorial Histories Publishing Co; 1st edition (June 1990); ISBN-13: 978-0929521404 Posted but not written by: Louis Sheehan [ One of my intentions with this blog is to simply collect articles of interest to me for purposes of future reference. I do my best to indicate who has actually composed the articles. NONE of the articles have been written by me. Further, this ‘blog’ will contain various drafts of unknown writings just to be saved in the event they are needed by me, etc.– Louis Sheehan ] Feel free to ignore this blog! I am intending to use it as a repository of various writings: drafts, doodles, etc. If there ARE any articles here, they are posted but not written by: Lou Sheehan </p> 20010991 2015-01-25 23:36:41 2015-01-25 23:36:41 open open air-sea-operations-1941-20010991 publish 0 0 post 0 Louis Sheehan Lou Sheehan Nikita Khrushchev Speech to 20th Congress of the C.P.S.U. http://Louis9J9Sheehan9esquire.blog.ca/2015/01/24/nikita-khrushchev-speech-to-20th-congress-of-the-c-p-s-u-20008638/ Sat, 24 Jan 2015 23:13:00 +0100 Beforethebigbang <p>Nikita Khrushchev Reference Archive (Sub Archive of Soviet Government Documents) Speech to 20th Congress of the C.P.S.U. Speech Delivered: February 24-25 1956; At the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU February 24-25 1956, Khrushchev delivered a report in which he denounced Stalin’s crimes and the ‘cult of personality’ surrounding Stalin. This speech would ultimately trigger a world-wide split: Comrades! In the Party Central Committee’s report at the 20th Congress and in a number of speeches by delegates to the Congress, as also formerly during Plenary CC/CPSU [Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union] sessions, quite a lot has been said about the cult of the individual and about its harmful consequences. After Stalin’s death, the Central Committee began to implement a policy of explaining concisely and consistently that it is impermissible and foreign to the spirit of Marxism-Leninism to elevate one person, to transform him into a superman possessing supernatural characteristics, akin to those of a god. Such a man supposedly knows everything, sees everything, thinks for everyone, can do anything, is infallible in his behavior. Such a belief about a man, and specifically about Stalin, was cultivated among us for many years. The objective of the present report is not a thorough evaluation of Stalin’s life and activity. Concerning Stalin’s merits, an entirely sufficient number of books, pamphlets and studies had already been written in his lifetime. Stalin’s role of Stalin in the preparation and execution of the Socialist Revolution, in the Civil War, and in the fight for the construction of socialism in our country, is universally known. Everyone knows it well. At present, we are concerned with a question which has immense importance for the Party now and for the future – with how the cult of the person of Stalin has been gradually growing, the cult which became at a certain specific stage the source of a whole series of exceedingly serious and grave perversions of Party principles, of Party democracy, of revolutionary legality. Because not all as yet realize fully the practical consequences resulting from the cult of the individual, [or] the great harm caused by violation of the principle of collective Party direction and by the accumulation of immense and limitless power in the hands of one person, the Central Committee considers it absolutely necessary to make material pertaining to this matter available to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Allow me first of all to remind you how severely the classics of Marxism-Leninism denounced every manifestation of the cult of the individual. In a letter to the German political worker Wilhelm Bloss, [Karl] Marx stated: “From my antipathy to any cult of the individual, I never made public during the existence of the [1st] International the numerous addresses from various countries which recognized my merits and which annoyed me. I did not even reply to them, except sometimes to rebuke their authors. [Fredrich] Engels and I first joined the secret society of Communists on the condition that everything making for superstitious worship of authority would be deleted from its statute. [Ferdinand] Lassalle subsequently did quite the opposite.” Sometime later Engels wrote: “Both Marx and I have always been against any public manifestation with regard to individuals, with the exception of cases when it had an important purpose. We most strongly opposed such manifestations which during our lifetime concerned us personally.” The great modesty of the genius of the Revolution, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, is known. Lenin always stressed the role of the people as the creator of history, the directing and organizational roles of the Party as a living and creative organism, and also the role of the Central Committee. Marxism does not negate the role of the leaders of the working class in directing the revolutionary liberation movement. While ascribing great importance to the role of the leaders and organizers of the masses, Lenin at the same time mercilessly stigmatized every manifestation of the cult of the individual, inexorably combated [any] foreign-to-Marxism views about a “hero” and a “crowd,” and countered all efforts to oppose a “hero” to the masses and to the people. Lenin taught that the Party’s strength depends on its indissoluble unity with the masses, on the fact that behind the Party follows the people – workers, peasants, and the intelligentsia. Lenin said, “Only he who believes in the people, [he] who submerges himself in the fountain of the living creativeness of the people, will win and retain power.” Lenin spoke with pride about the Bolshevik Communist Party as the leader and teacher of the people. He called for the presentation of all the most important questions before the opinion of knowledgeable workers, before the opinion of their Party. He said: “We believe in it, we see in it the wisdom, the honor, and the conscience of our epoch.” Lenin resolutely stood against every attempt aimed at belittling or weakening the directing role of the Party in the structure of the Soviet state. He worked out Bolshevik principles of Party direction and norms of Party life, stressing that the guiding principle of Party leadership is its collegiality. Already during the pre-Revolutionary years, Lenin called the Central Committee a collective of leaders and the guardian and interpreter of Party principles. “During the period between congresses,” Lenin pointed out, “the Central Committee guards and interprets the principles of the Party.” Underlining the role of the Central Committee and its authority, Vladimir Ilyich pointed out: “Our Central Committee constituted itself as a closely centralized and highly authoritative group.” During Lenin’s life the Central Committee was a real expression of collective leadership: of the Party and of the nation. Being a militant Marxist-revolutionist, always unyielding in matters of principle, Lenin never imposed his views upon his co-workers by force. He tried to convince. He patiently explained his opinions to others. Lenin always diligently saw to it that the norms of Party life were realized, that Party statutes were enforced, that Party congresses and Plenary sessions of the Central Committee took place at their proper intervals. In addition to V. I. Lenin’s great accomplishments for the victory of the working class and of the working peasants, for the victory of our Party and for the application of the ideas of scientific Communism to life, his acute mind expressed itself also in this. [Lenin] detected in Stalin in time those negative characteristics which resulted later in grave consequences. Fearing the future fate of the Party and of the Soviet nation, V. I. Lenin made a completely correct characterization of Stalin. He pointed out that it was necessary to consider transferring Stalin from the position of [Party] General Secretary because Stalin was excessively rude, did not have a proper attitude toward his comrades, and was capricious and abused his power. In December 1922, in a letter to the Party Congress, Vladimir Ilyich wrote: “After taking over the position of General Secretary, comrade Stalin accumulated immeasurable power in his hands and I am not certain whether he will be always able to use this power with the required care.” This letter – a political document of tremendous importance, known in the Party’s history as Lenin’s “Testament” - was distributed among [you] delegates to [this] 20th Party Congress. You have read it and will undoubtedly read it again more than once. You might reflect on Lenin’s plain words, in which expression is given to Vladimir Ilyich’s anxiety concerning the Party, the people, the state, and the future direction of Party policy. Vladimir Ilyich said: “Stalin is excessively rude, and this defect, which can be freely tolerated in our midst and in contacts among us Communists, becomes a defect which cannot be tolerated in one holding the position of General Secretary. Because of this, I propose that the comrades consider the method by which Stalin would be removed from this position and by which another man would be selected for it, a man who, above all, would differ from Stalin in only one quality, namely, greater tolerance, greater loyalty, greater kindness and more considerate attitude toward the comrades, a less capricious temper, etc.” This document of Lenin’s was made known to the delegates at the 13th Party Congress, who discussed the question of transferring Stalin from the position of General Secretary. The delegates declared themselves in favor of retaining Stalin in this post, hoping that he would heed Vladimir Ilyich’s critical remarks and would be able to overcome the defects which caused Lenin serious anxiety. Comrades! The Party Congress should become acquainted with two new documents, which confirm Stalin’s character as already outlined by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin in his “Testament.” These documents are a letter from Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya to [Lev] Kamenev, who was at that time head of the Politbiuro, and a personal letter from Vladimir Ilyich Lenin to Stalin. I will now read these documents: “LEV BORISOVICH! “Because of a short letter which I had written in words dictated to me by Vladimir Ilyich by permission of the doctors, Stalin allowed himself yesterday an unusually rude outburst directed at me. This is not my first day in the Party. During all these 30 years I have never heard one word of rudeness from any comrade. The Party’s and Ilyich’s business is no less dear to me than to Stalin. I need maximum self-control right now. What one can and what one cannot discuss with Ilyich I know better than any doctor, because I know what makes him nervous and what does not. In any case I know [it] better than Stalin. I am turning to you and to Grigory [Zinoviev] as much closer comrades of V[ladimir] I[lyich]. I beg you to protect me from rude interference with my private life and from vile invectives and threats. I have no doubt what the Control Commission’s unanimous decision [in this matter], with which Stalin sees fit to threaten me, will be. However I have neither strength nor time to waste on this foolish quarrel. And I am a human being and my nerves are strained to the utmost. “N. KRUPSKAYA” Nadezhda Konstantinovna wrote this letter on December 23, 1922. After two and a half months, in March 1923, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin sent Stalin the following letter: “TO COMRADE STALIN (COPIES FOR: KAMENEV AND ZINOVIEV): “Dear comrade Stalin! “You permitted yourself a rude summons of my wife to the telephone and a rude reprimand of her. Despite the fact that she told you that she agreed to forget what was said, nevertheless Zinoviev and Kamenev heard about it from her. I have no intention to forget so easily that which is being done against me. I need not stress here that I consider as directed against me that which is being done against my wife. I ask you, therefore, that you weigh carefully whether you are agreeable to retracting your words and apologizing, or whether you prefer the severance of relations between us. “SINCERELY: LENIN, MARCH 5, 1923 (Commotion in the hall.) Comrades! I will not comment on these documents. They speak eloquently for themselves. Since Stalin could behave in this manner during Lenin’s life, could thus behave toward Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya – whom the Party knows well and values highly as a loyal friend of Lenin and as an active fighter for the cause of the Party since its creation – we can easily imagine how Stalin treated other people. These negative characteristics of his developed steadily and during the last years acquired an absolutely insufferable character. As later events have proven, Lenin’s anxiety was justified. In the first period after Lenin’s death, Stalin still paid attention to his advice, but later he began to disregard the serious admonitions of Vladimir Ilyich. When we analyze the practice of Stalin in regard to the direction of the Party and of the country, when we pause to consider everything which Stalin perpetrated, we must be convinced that Lenin’s fears were justified. The negative characteristics of Stalin, which, in Lenin’s time, were only incipient, transformed themselves during the last years into a grave abuse of power by Stalin, which caused untold harm to our Party. We have to consider seriously and analyze correctly this matter in order that we may preclude any possibility of a repetition in any form whatever of what took place during the life of Stalin, who absolutely did not tolerate collegiality in leadership and in work, and who practiced brutal violence, not only toward everything which opposed him, but also toward that which seemed, to his capricious and despotic character, contrary to his concepts. Stalin acted not through persuasion, explanation and patient cooperation with people, but by imposing his concepts and demanding absolute submission to his opinion. Whoever opposed these concepts or tried to prove his [own] viewpoint and the correctness of his [own] position was doomed to removal from the leadership collective and to subsequent moral and physical annihilation. This was especially true during the period following the 17th Party Congress, when many prominent Party leaders and rank-and-file Party workers, honest and dedicated to the cause of Communism, fell victim to Stalin’s despotism. We must affirm that the Party fought a serious fight against the Trotskyites, rightists and bourgeois nationalists, and that it disarmed ideologically all the enemies of Leninism. This ideological fight was carried on successfully, as a result of which the Party became strengthened and tempered. Here Stalin played a positive role. The Party led a great political-ideological struggle against those in its own ranks who proposed anti-Leninist theses, who represented a political line hostile to the Party and to the cause of socialism. This was a stubborn and a difficult fight but a necessary one, because the political line of both the Trotskyite-Zinovievite bloc and of the Bukharinites led actually toward the restoration of capitalism and toward capitulation to the world bourgeoisie. Let us consider for a moment what would have happened if in 1928-1929 the political line of right deviation had prevailed among us, or orientation toward “cotton-dress industrialization,” or toward the kulak, etc. We would not now have a powerful heavy industry; we would not have the kolkhozes; we would find ourselves disarmed and weak in a capitalist encirclement. It was for this reason that the Party led an inexorable ideological fight, explaining to all [its] members and to the non-Party masses the harm and the danger of the anti-Leninist proposals of the Trotskyite opposition and the rightist opportunists. And this great work of explaining the Party line bore fruit. Both the Trotskyites and the rightist opportunists were politically isolated. An overwhelming Party majority supported the Leninist line, and the Party was able to awaken and organize the working masses to apply the Leninist line and to build socialism. A fact worth noting is that extreme repressive measures were not used against the Trotskyites, the Zinovievites, the Bukharinites, and others during the course of the furious ideological fight against them. The fight [in the 1920s] was on ideological grounds. But some years later, when socialism in our country was fundamentally constructed, when the exploiting classes were generally liquidated, when Soviet social structure had radically changed, when the social basis for political movements and groups hostile to the Party had violently contracted, when the ideological opponents of the Party were long since defeated politically – then repression directed against them began. It was precisely during this period (1935-1937-1938) that the practice of mass repression through the Government apparatus was born, first against the enemies of Leninism – Trotskyites, Zinovievites, Bukharinites, long since politically defeated by the Party – and subsequently also against many honest Communists, against those Party cadres who had borne the heavy load of the Civil War and the first and most difficult years of industrialization and collectivization, who had fought actively against the Trotskyites and the rightists for the Leninist Party line. Stalin originated the concept “enemy of the people.” This term automatically made it unnecessary that the ideological errors of a man or men engaged in a controversy be proven. It made possible the use of the cruelest repression, violating all norms of revolutionary legality, against anyone who in any way disagreed with Stalin, against those who were only suspected of hostile intent, against those who had bad reputations. The concept “enemy of the people” actually eliminated the possibility of any kind of ideological fight or the making of one’s views known on this or that issue, even [issues] of a practical nature. On the whole, the only proof of guilt actually used, against all norms of current legal science, was the “confession” of the accused himself. As subsequent probing has proven, “confessions” were acquired through physical pressures against the accused. This led to glaring violations of revolutionary legality and to the fact that many entirely innocent individuals – [persons] who in the past had defended the Party line – became victims. We must assert that, in regard to those persons who in their time had opposed the Party line, there were often no sufficiently serious reasons for their physical annihilation. The formula “enemy of the people” was specifically introduced for the purpose of physically annihilating such individuals. It is a fact that many persons who were later annihilated as enemies of the Party and people had worked with Lenin during his life. Some of these persons had made errors during Lenin’s life, but, despite this, Lenin benefited by their work; he corrected them and he did everything possible to retain them in the ranks of the Party; he induced them to follow him. In this connection the delegates to the Party Congress should familiarize themselves with an unpublished note by V. I. Lenin directed to the Central Committee’s Politbiuro in October 1920. Outlining the duties of the [Party] Control Commission, Lenin wrote that the Commission should be transformed into a real “organ of Party and proletarian conscience.” “As a special duty of the Control Commission there is recommended a deep, individualized relationship with, and sometimes even a type of therapy for, the representatives of the so-called opposition – those who have experienced a psychological crisis because of failure in their Soviet or Party career. An effort should be made to quiet them, to explain the matter to them in a way used among comrades, to find for them (avoiding the method of issuing orders) a task for which they are psychologically fitted. Advice and rules relating to this matter are to be formulated by the Central Committee’s Organizational Bureau, etc.” Everyone knows how irreconcilable Lenin was with the ideological enemies of Marxism, with those who deviated from the correct Party line. At the same time, however, Lenin, as is evident from the given document, in his practice of directing the Party demanded the most intimate Party contact with people who had shown indecision or temporary non-conformity with the Party line, but whom it was possible to return to the Party path. Lenin advised that such people should be patiently educated without the application of extreme methods. Lenin’s wisdom in dealing with people was evident in his work with cadres. An entirely different relationship with people characterized Stalin. Lenin’s traits – patient work with people, stubborn and painstaking education of them, the ability to induce people to follow him without using compulsion, but rather through the ideological influence on them of the whole collective – were entirely foreign to Stalin. He discarded the Leninist method of convincing and educating, he abandoned the method of ideological struggle for that of administrative violence, mass repressions and terror. He acted on an increasingly larger scale and more stubbornly through punitive organs, at the same time often violating all existing norms of morality and of Soviet laws. Arbitrary behavior by one person encouraged and permitted arbitrariness in others. Mass arrests and deportations of many thousands of people, execution without trial and without normal investigation created conditions of insecurity, fear and even desperation. This, of course, did not contribute toward unity of the Party ranks and of all strata of working people, but, on the contrary, brought about annihilation and the expulsion from the Party of workers who were loyal but inconvenient to Stalin. Our Party fought for the implementation of Lenin’s plans for the construction of socialism. This was an ideological fight. Had Leninist principles been observed during the course of this fight, had the Party’s devotion to principles been skillfully combined with a keen and solicitous concern for people, had they not been repelled and wasted but rather drawn to our side, we certainly would not have had such a brutal violation of revolutionary legality and many thousands of people would not have fallen victim to the method of terror. Extraordinary methods would then have been resorted to only against those people who had in fact committed criminal acts against the Soviet system. Let us recall some historical facts. In the days before the October Revolution, two members of the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party – Kamenev and Zinoviev – declared themselves against Lenin’s plan for an armed uprising. In addition, on October 18 they published in the Menshevik newspaper, Novaya Zhizn, a statement declaring that the Bolsheviks were making preparations for an uprising and that they considered it adventuristic. Kamenev and Zinoviev thus disclosed to the enemy the decision of the Central Committee to stage the uprising, and that the uprising had been organized to take place within the very near future. This was treason against the Party and against the Revolution. In this connection, V. I. Lenin wrote: “Kamenev and Zinoviev revealed the decision of the Central Committee of their Party on the armed uprising to [Mikhail] Rodzyanko and [Alexander] Kerensky.... He put before the Central Committee the question of Zinoviev’s and Kamenev’s expulsion from the Party. However, after the Great Socialist October Revolution, as is known, Zinoviev and Kamenev were given leading positions. Lenin put them in positions in which they carried out most responsible Party tasks and participated actively in the work of the leading Party and Soviet organs. It is known that Zinoviev and Kamenev committed a number of other serious errors during Lenin’s life. In his “Testament” Lenin warned that “Zinoviev’s and Kamenev’s October episode was of course not an accident.” But Lenin did not pose the question of their arrest and certainly not their shooting. Or, let us take the example of the Trotskyites. At present, after a sufficiently long historical period, we can speak about the fight with the Trotskyites with complete calm and can analyze this matter with sufficient objectivity. After all, around Trotsky were people whose origin cannot by any means be traced to bourgeois society. Part of them belonged to the Party intelligentsia and a certain part were recruited from among the workers. We can name many individuals who, in their time, joined the Trotskyites; however, these same individuals took an active part in the workers’ movement before the Revolution, during the Socialist October Revolution itself, and also in the consolidation of the victory of this greatest of revolutions. Many of them broke with Trotskyism and returned to Leninist positions. Was it necessary to annihilate such people? We are deeply convinced that, had Lenin lived, such an extreme method would not have been used against any of them. Such are only a few historical facts. But can it be said that Lenin did not decide to use even the most severe means against enemies of the Revolution when this was actually necessary? No; no one can say this. Vladimir Ilyich demanded uncompromising dealings with the enemies of the Revolution and of the working class and when necessary resorted ruthlessly to such methods. You will recall only V. I. Lenin’s fight with the Socialist Revolutionary organizers of the anti-Soviet uprising, with the counterrevolutionary kulaks in 1918 and with others, when Lenin without hesitation used the most extreme methods against the enemies. Lenin used such methods, however, only against actual class enemies and not against those who blunder, who err, and whom it was possible to lead through ideological influence and even retain in the leadership. Lenin used severe methods only in the most necessary cases, when the exploiting classes were still in existence and were vigorously opposing the Revolution, when the struggle for survival was decidedly assuming the sharpest forms, even including a Civil War. Stalin, on the other hand, used extreme methods and mass repressions at a time when the Revolution was already victorious, when the Soviet state was strengthened, when the exploiting classes were already liquidated and socialist relations were rooted solidly in all phases of national economy, when our Party was politically consolidated and had strengthened itself both numerically and ideologically. It is clear that here Stalin showed in a whole series of cases his intolerance, his brutality and his abuse of power. Instead of proving his political correctness and mobilizing the masses, he often chose the path of repression and physical annihilation, not only against actual enemies, but also against individuals who had not committed any crimes against the Party and the Soviet Government. Here we see no wisdom but only a demonstration of the brutal force which had once so alarmed V. I. Lenin. Lately, especially after the unmasking of the Beria gang, the Central Committee looked into a series of matters fabricated by this gang. This revealed a very ugly picture of brutal willfulness connected with the incorrect behavior of Stalin. As facts prove, Stalin, using his unlimited power, allowed himself many abuses, acting in the name of the Central Committee, not asking for the opinion of the Committee members nor even of the members of the Central Committee’s Politbiuro; often he did not inform them about his personal decisions concerning very important Party and government matters. Considering the question of the cult of an individual, we must first of all show everyone what harm this caused to the interests of our Party. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin had always stressed the Party’s role and significance in the direction of the socialist government of workers and peasants; he saw in this the chief precondition for a successful building of socialism in our country. Pointing to the great responsibility of the Bolshevik Party, as ruling Party of the Soviet state, Lenin called for the most meticulous observance of all norms of Party life; he called for the realization of the principles of collegiality in the direction of the Party and the state. Collegiality of leadership flows from the very nature of our Party, a Party built on the principles of democratic centralism. “This means,” said Lenin, “that all Party matters are accomplished by all Party members – directly or through representatives – who, without any exceptions, are subject to the same rules; in addition, all administrative members, all directing collegia, all holders of Party positions are elective, they must account for their activities and are recallable.” It is known that Lenin himself offered an example of the most careful observance of these principles. There was no matter so important that Lenin himself decided it without asking for advice and approval of the majority of the Central Committee members or of the members of the Central Committee’s Politbiuro. In the most difficult period for our Party and our country, Lenin considered it necessary regularly to convoke Congresses, Party Conferences and Plenary sessions of the Central Committee at which all the most important questions were discussed and where resolutions, carefully worked out by the collective of leaders, were approved. We can recall, for an example, the year 1918 when the country was threatened by the attack of the imperialistic interventionists. In this situation the 7th Party Congress was convened in order to discuss a vitally important matter which could not be postponed – the matter of peace. In 1919, while the Civil War was raging, the 8th Party Congress convened which adopted a new Party program, decided such important matters as the relationship with the peasant masses, the organization of the Red Army, the leading role of the Party in the work of the soviets, the correction of the social composition of the Party, and other matters. In 1920 the 9th Party Congress was convened which laid down guiding principles pertaining to the Party’s work in the sphere of economic construction. In 1921 the 10th Party Congress accepted Lenin’s New Economic Policy and the historic resolution called “On Party Unity.” During Lenin’s life, Party congresses were convened regularly; always, when a radical turn in the development of the Party and the country took place, Lenin considered it absolutely necessary that the Party discuss at length all the basic matters pertaining to internal and foreign policy and to questions bearing on the development of Party and government. It is very characteristic that Lenin addressed to the Party Congress as the highest Party organ his last articles, letters and remarks. During the period between congresses, the Central Committee of the Party, acting as the most authoritative leading collective, meticulously observed the principles of the Party and carried out its policy. So it was during Lenin’s life. Were our Party’s holy Leninist principles observed after the death of Vladimir Ilyich? Whereas, during the first few years after Lenin’s death, Party Congresses and Central Committee Plenums took place more or less regularly, later, when Stalin began increasingly to abuse his power, these principles were brutally violated. This was especially evident during the last 15 years of his life. Was it a normal situation when over 13 years elapsed between the 18th and 19th Party Congresses, years during which our Party and our country had experienced so many important events? These events demanded categorically that the Party should have passed resolutions pertaining to the country’s defense during the [Great] Patriotic War and to peacetime construction after the war. Even after the end of the war a Congress was not convened for over seven years. Central Committee Plenums were hardly ever called. It should be sufficient to mention that during all the years of the Patriotic War not a single Central Committee Plenum took place. It is true that there was an attempt to call a Central Committee Plenum in October 1941, when Central Committee members from the whole country were called to Moscow. They waited two days for the opening of the Plenum, but in vain. Stalin did not even want to meet and talk to the Central Committee members. This fact shows how demoralized Stalin was in the first months of the war and how haughtily and disdainfully he treated the Central Committee members. In practice, Stalin ignored the norms of Party life and trampled on the Leninist principle of collective Party leadership. Stalin’s willfulness vis a vis the Party and its Central Committee became fully evident after the 17th Party Congress, which took place in 1934. Having at its disposal numerous data showing brutal willfulness toward Party cadres, the Central Committee has created a Party commission under the control of the Central Committee’s Presidium. It has been charged with investigating what made possible mass repressions against the majority of the Central Committee members and candidates elected at the 17th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks). The commission has become acquainted with a large quantity of materials in the NKVD archives and with other documents. It has established many facts pertaining to the fabrication of cases against Communists, to false accusations, [and] to glaring abuses of socialist legality, which resulted in the death of innocent people. It became apparent that many Party, Soviet and economic activists who in 1937-1938 were branded “enemies” were actually never enemies, spies, wreckers, etc., but were always honest Communists. They were merely stigmatized [as enemies]. Often, no longer able to bear barbaric tortures, they charged themselves (at the order of the investigative judges/falsifiers) with all kinds of grave and unlikely crimes. The commission has presented to the Central Committee’s Presidium lengthy and documented materials pertaining to mass repressions against the delegates to the 17th Party Congress and against members of the Central Committee elected at that Congress. These materials have been studied by the Presidium.. It was determined that of the 139 members and candidates of the Central Committee who were elected at the 17th Congress, 98 persons, i.e., 70 per cent, were arrested and shot (mostly in 1937-1938). (Indignation in the hall.) What was the composition of the delegates to the 17th Congress? It is known that 80 per cent of the voting participants of the 17th Congress joined the Party during the years of conspiracy before the Revolution and during the Civil War, i.e. meaning before 1921. By social origin the basic mass of the delegates to the Congress were workers (60 per cent of the voting members). For this reason, it is inconceivable that a Congress so composed could have elected a Central Committee in which a majority [of the members] would prove to be enemies of the Party. The only reasons why 70 per cent of the Central Committee members and candidates elected at the 17th Congress were branded as enemies of the Party and of the people were because honest Communists were slandered, accusations against them were fabricated, and revolutionary legality was gravely undermined. The same fate met not only Central Committee members but also the majority of the delegates to the 17th Party Congress. Of 1,966 delegates with either voting or advisory rights, 1,108 persons were arrested on charges of anti-revolutionary crimes, i.e., decidedly more than a majority. This very fact shows how absurd, wild and contrary to common sense were the charges of counterrevolutionary crimes made out, as we now see, against a majority of participants at the 17th Party Congress. (Indignation in the hall.) We should recall that the 17th Party Congress is known historically as the Congress of Victors. Delegates to the Congress were active participants in the building of our socialist state; many of them suffered and fought for Party interests during the pre-Revolutionary years in the conspiracy and at the civil-war fronts; they fought their enemies valiantly and often nervelessly looked into the face of death. How, then, can we believe that such people could prove to be “two-faced” and had joined the camps of the enemies of socialism during the era after the political liquidation of Zinovievites, Trotskyites and rightists and after the great accomplishments of socialist construction? This was the result of the abuse of power by Stalin, who began to use mass terror against Party cadres. What is the reason that mass repressions against activists increased more and more after the 17th Party Congress? It was because at that time Stalin had so elevated himself above the Party and above the nation that he ceased to consider either the Central Committee or the Party. Stalin still reckoned with the opinion of the collective before the 17th Congress. After the complete political liquidation of the Trotskyites, Zinovievites and Bukharinites, however, when the Party had achieved unity, Stalin to an ever greater degree stopped considering the members of the Party’s Central Committee and even the members of the Politbiuro. Stalin thought that now he could decide all things alone and that all he needed were statisticians. He treated all others in such a way that they could only listen to him and praise him. After the criminal murder of Sergey M. Kirov, mass repressions and brutal acts of violation of socialist legality began. On the evening of December 1, 1934 on Stalin’s initiative (without the approval of the Politbiuro –which was given two days later, casually), the Secretary of the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee, [Abel] Yenukidze, signed the following directive: “1. Investigative agencies are directed to speed up the cases of those accused of the preparation or execution of acts of terror. “2. Judicial organs are directed not to hold up the execution of death sentences pertaining to crimes of this category in order to consider the possibility of pardon, because the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR does not consider as possible the receiving of petitions of this sort. “3. The organs of the Commissariat of Internal Affairs [NKVD] are directed to execute the death sentences against criminals of the above-mentioned category immediately after the passage of sentences.” This directive became the basis for mass acts of abuse against socialist legality. During many of the fabricated court cases, the accused were charged with “the preparation” of terroristic acts; this deprived them of any possibility that their cases might be re-examined, even when they stated before the court that their “confessions” were secured by force, and when, in a convincing manner, they disproved the accusations against them. It must be asserted that to this day the circumstances surrounding Kirov’s murder hide many things which are inexplicable and mysterious and demand a most careful examination. There are reasons for the suspicion that the killer of Kirov, [Leonid] Nikolayev, was assisted by someone from among the people whose duty it was to protect the person of Kirov. A month and a half before the killing, Nikolayev was arrested on the grounds of suspicious behavior but he was released and not even searched. It is an unusually suspicious circumstance that when the Chekist assigned to protect Kirov was being brought for an interrogation, on December 2, 1934, he was killed in a car “accident” in which no other occupants of the car were harmed. After the murder of Kirov, top functionaries of the Leningrad NKVD were given very light sentences, but in 1937 they were shot. We can assume that they were shot in order to cover up the traces of the organizers of Kirov’s killing. (Movement in the hall.) Mass repressions grew tremendously from the end of 1936 after a telegram from Stalin and [Andrey] Zhdanov, dated from Sochi on September 25, 1936, was addressed to [Lazar] Kaganovich, [Vyacheslav] Molotov and other members of the Politbiuro. The content of the telegram was as follows: “We deem it absolutely necessary and urgent that comrade [Nikolay] Yezhov be nominated to the post of People’s Commissar for Internal Affairs. [Genrikh] Yagoda definitely has proven himself incapable of unmasking the Trotskyite-Zinovievite bloc. The OGPU is four years behind in this matter. This is noted by all Party workers and by the majority of the representatives of the NKVD.” Strictly speaking, we should stress that Stalin did not meet with and, therefore, could not know the opinion of Party workers. This Stalinist formulation that the “NKVD is four years behind” in applying mass repression and that there is a necessity for “catching up” with the neglected work directly pushed the NKVD workers on the path of mass arrests and executions. We should state that this formulation was also forced on the February-March Plenary session of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) in 1937. The Plenary resolution approved it on the basis of Yezhov’s report, “Lessons flowing from the harmful activity, diversion and espionage of the Japanese-German-Trotskyite agents,” stating: “The Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) considers that all facts revealed during the investigation into the matter of an anti-Soviet Trotskyite center and of its followers in the provinces show that the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs has fallen behind at least four years in the attempt to unmask these most inexorable enemies of the people. The mass repressions at this time were made under the slogan of a fight against the Trotskyites. Did the Trotskyites at this time actually constitute such a danger to our Party and to the Soviet state? We should recall that in 1927, on the eve of the 15th Party Congress, only some 4,000 [Party] votes were cast for the Trotskyite-Zinovievite opposition while there were 724,000 for the Party line. During the 10 years which passed between the 15th Party Congress and the February-March Central Committee Plenum, Trotskyism was completely disarmed. Many former Trotskyites changed their former views and worked in the various sectors building socialism. It is clear that in the situation of socialist victory there was no basis for mass terror in the country. Stalin’s report at the February-March Central Committee Plenum in 1937, “Deficiencies of Party work and methods for the liquidation of the Trotskyites and of other two-facers,” contained an attempt at theoretical justification of the mass terror policy under the pretext that class war must allegedly sharpen as we march forward toward socialism. Stalin asserted that both history and Lenin taught him this. Actually Lenin taught that the application of revolutionary violence is necessitated by the resistance of the exploiting classes, and this referred to the era when the exploiting classes existed and were powerful. As soon as the nation’s political situation had improved, when in January 1920 the Red Army took Rostov and thus won a most important victory over [General A. I. ] Denikin, Lenin instructed [Felix] Dzerzhinsky to stop mass terror and to abolish the death penalty. Lenin justified this important political move of the Soviet state in the following manner in his report at the session of the All-Union Central Executive Committee on February 2, 1920: “We were forced to use terror because of the terror practiced by the Entente, when strong world powers threw their hordes against us, not avoiding any type of conduct. We would not have lasted two days had we not answered these attempts of officers and White Guardists in a merciless fashion; this meant the use of terror, but this was forced upon us by the terrorist methods of the Entente. “But as soon as we attained a decisive victory, even before the end of the war, immediately after taking Rostov, we gave up the use of the death penalty and thus proved that we intend to execute our own program in the manner that we promised. We say that the application of violence flows out of the decision to smother the exploiters, the big landowners and the capitalists; as soon as this was accomplished we gave up the use of all extraordinary methods. We have proved this in practice.” Stalin deviated from these clear and plain precepts of Lenin. Stalin put the Party and the NKVD up to the use of mass terror when the exploiting classes had been liquidated in our country and when there were no serious reasons for the use of extraordinary mass terror. This terror was actually directed not at the remnants of the defeated exploiting classes but against the honest workers of the Party and of the Soviet state; against them were made lying, slanderous and absurd accusations concerning “two-facedness,” “espionage,” “sabotage,” preparation of fictitious “plots,” etc. At the February-March Central Committee Plenum in 1937 many members actually questioned the rightness of the established course regarding mass repressions under the pretext of combating “two-facedness.” Comrade [Pavel] Postyshev most ably expressed these doubts. He said: “I have philosophized that the severe years of fighting have passed. Party members who have lost their backbones have broken down or have joined the camp of the enemy; healthy elements have fought for the Party. These were the years of industrialization and collectivization. I never thought it possible that after this severe era had passed Karpov and people like him would find themselves in the camp of the enemy. Karpov was a worker in the Ukrainian Central Committee whom Postyshev knew well.) And now, according to the testimony, it appears that Karpov was recruited in 1934 by the Trotskyites. I personally do not believe that in 1934 an honest Party member who had trod the long road of unrelenting fight against enemies for the Party and for socialism would now be in the camp of the enemies. I do not believe it.... I cannot imagine how it would be possible to travel with the Party during the difficult years and then, in 1934, join the Trotskyites. It is an odd thing....” (Movement in the hall.) Using Stalin’s formulation, namely, that the closer we are to socialism the more enemies we will have, and using the resolution of the February-March Central Committee Plenum passed on the basis of Yezhov’s report, the provocateurs who had infiltrated the state-security organs together with conscienceless careerists began to protect with the Party name the mass terror against Party cadres, cadres of the Soviet state, and ordinary Soviet citizens. It should suffice to say that the number of arrests based on charges of counterrevolutionary crimes had grown ten times between 1936 and 1937. It is known that brutal willfulness was practiced against leading Party workers. The [relevant] Party statute, approved at the 17th Party Congress, was based on Leninist principles expressed at the 10th Party Congress. It stated that, in order to apply an extreme method such as exclusion from the Party against a Central Committee member, against a Central Committee candidate or against a member of the Party Control Commission, “it is necessary to call a Central Committee Plenum and to invite to the Plenum all Central Committee candidate members and all members of the Party Control Commission”; only if two-thirds of the members of such a general assembly of responsible Party leaders found it necessary, only then could a Central Committee member or candidate be expelled. The majority of those Central Committee’s members and candidates who were elected at the 17th Congress and arrested in 1937-1938 were expelled from the Party illegally through brutal abuse of the Party statute, because the question of their expulsion was never studied at the Central Committee Plenum. Now, when the cases of some of these so-called “spies” and “saboteurs” were examined, it was found that all their cases were fabricated. The confessions of guilt of many of those arrested and charged with enemy activity were gained with the help of cruel and inhuman tortures. At the same time, Stalin, as we have been informed by members of the Politbiuro of that time, did not show them the statements of many accused political activists when they retracted their confessions before the military tribunal and asked for an objective examination of their cases. There were many such declarations, and Stalin doubtless knew of them. The Central Committee considers it absolutely necessary to inform the Congress of many such fabricated “cases” against the members of the Party’s Central Committee elected at the 17th Party Congress. An example of vile provocation, of odious falsification and of criminal violation of revolutionary legality is the case of the former candidate for the Central Committee Politbiuro, one of the most eminent workers of the Party and of the Soviet Government, comrade [Robert] Eikhe, who had been a Party member since 1905. (Commotion in the hall.) Comrade Eikhe was arrested on April 29, 1938 on the basis of slanderous materials, without the sanction of the [State] Prosecutor of the USSR. This was finally received 15 months after the arrest. The investigation of Eikhe’s case was made in a manner which most brutally violated Soviet legality and was accompanied by willfulness and falsification. Under torture, Eikhe was forced to sign a protocol of his confession prepared in advance by the investigative judges. In it, he and several other eminent Party workers were accused of anti-Soviet activity. On October 1, 1939 Eikhe sent his declaration to Stalin in which he categorically denied his guilt and asked for an examination of his case. In the declaration he wrote: “There is no more bitter misery than to sit in the jail of a government for which I have always fought.” A second declaration of Eikhe has been preserved, which he sent to Stalin on October 27, 1939. In it [Eikhe] cited facts very convincingly and countered the slanderous accusations made against him, arguing that this provocatory accusation was on one hand the work of real Trotskyites whose arrests he had sanctioned as First Secretary of the West Siberian Regional Party Committee and who conspired in order to take revenge on him, and, on the other hand, the result of the base falsification of materials by the investigative judges. Eikhe wrote in his declaration: “... On October 25 of this year I was informed that the investigation in my case has been concluded and I was given access to the materials of this investigation. Had I been guilty of only one hundredth of the crimes with which I am charged, I would not have dared to send you this pre-execution declaration. However I have not been guilty of even one of the things with which I am charged and my heart is clean of even the shadow of baseness. I have never in my life told you a word of falsehood, and now, finding both feet in the grave, I am still not lying. My whole case is a typical example of provocation, slander and violation of the elementary basis of revolutionary legality.... “... The confessions which were made part of my file are not only absurd but contain slander toward the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) and toward the Council of People’s Commissars. [This is] because correct resolutions of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) and of the Council of People’s Commissars which were not made on my initiative and [were promulgated] without my participation are presented as hostile acts of counterrevolutionary organizations made at my suggestion. “I am now alluding to the most disgraceful part of my life and to my really grave guilt against the Party and against you. This is my confession of counterrevolutionary activity.... The case is as follows: Not being able to suffer the tortures to which I was submitted by [Z.] Ushakov and Nikolayev – especially by the former, who utilized the knowledge that my broken ribs have not properly mended and have caused me great pain – I have been forced to accuse myself and others. “The majority of my confession has been suggested or dictated by Ushakov. The rest is my reconstruction of NKVD materials from Western Siberia for which I assumed all responsibility. If some part of the story which Ushakov fabricated and which I signed did not properly hang together, I was forced to sign another variation. The same thing was done to [Moisey] Rukhimovich, who was at first designated as a member of the reserve net and whose name later was removed without telling me anything about it. The same also was done with the leader of the reserve net, supposedly created by Bukharin in 1935. At first I wrote my [own] name in, and then I was instructed to insert [Valery] Mezhlauk’s. There were other similar incidents. “... I am asking and begging you that you again examine my case, and this not for the purpose of sparing me but in order to unmask the vile provocation which, like a snake, wound itself around many persons in a great degree due to my meanness and criminal slander. I have never betrayed you or the Party. I know that I perish because of vile and mean work of enemies of the Party and of the people, who have fabricated the provocation against me.” It would appear that such an important declaration was worth an examination by the Central Committee. This, however, was not done.