Denikin's Moscow directive

On 3 July 1919 (20 June in the Julian calendar, which the Whites in southern Russia still used) General Anton Denikin, commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of South Russia, issued directive No. 08878 in Tsaritsyn. It began with the words: “Having as the final aim the capture of the heart of Russia, Moscow, I order…”. The Whites had taken the city on the Volga only three days earlier. In the army the document was soon called the “Moscow directive”, and in the later days of defeat it was blamed for excessive optimism. Denikin did not deny it in his memoirs: “Yes, without closing my eyes to the great difficulties still ahead of us, I was an optimist then.”

A summer of victories

Since May the armies of the South had been advancing along the whole front. The Don Army crossed the Donets and the Don, a division of General Shkuro’s corps routed the forces of Nestor Makhno (PL) at Huliaipole, and on 24 June, after five days of fighting, units of General Alexander Kutepov’s 1st Corps broke into Kharkov. By the end of June the Whites held the Crimea and Yekaterinoslav. On 30 June the Caucasian Army of General Pyotr Wrangel, supported by British tanks, took Tsaritsyn. Denikin wrote that the success cost much blood: among the killed and wounded were five divisional commanders. The front of the Armed Forces of South Russia now ran from Tsaritsyn through Balashov, Belgorod and Yekaterinoslav to the lower Dnieper, its flanks resting on the Volga and the Dnieper. A few weeks earlier, on 12 June, Denikin had announced that he was subordinating himself to Admiral Alexander Kolchak as Supreme Ruler, although Kolchak’s spring offensive had by then already collapsed.

Three roads to Moscow

The directive gave each army its own line of advance. Wrangel was to reach the line Saratov–Rtishchevo–Balashov and advance through Penza, Ruzayevka and Arzamas on Nizhny Novgorod, Vladimir and Moscow, while also sending detachments to make contact with the Ural Cossacks. General Vladimir Sidorin (PL)’s Don Army was to strike at Moscow along two roads, through Voronezh, Kozlov and Ryazan, and through Novy Oskol, Yelets and Kashira. The most important task went to the Volunteer Army of General Vladimir May-Mayevsky (PL), about 40,000 strong according to the Soviet encyclopedia. It was to march on Moscow by the shortest road, through Kursk, Oryol and Tula (PL), and to cover itself in the west by advancing to the Dnieper and the Desna and taking Kiev. General Dobrovolsky’s group was to take the lower Dnieper and then Kherson and Mykolaiv, and the Black Sea Fleet was to blockade Odessa.

Denikin explained that the directive placed the main blow on the shortest roads to the centre, those through Kursk and Voronezh. It also had a psychological purpose. It confronted part of the Cossacks, who were reluctant to fight outside their own lands, with the question of going beyond the borders of the Cossack territories, and it showed the soldiers “a final, distant, cherished goal”. “‘Moscow’ was, of course, a symbol. Everyone dreamed of ‘marching on Moscow’, and everyone was given that hope,” he wrote.

Critics and opponents

Wrangel called the directive a “fatal mistake”. He believed that instead of dispersing forces along the roads to Moscow, the Whites should have consolidated on the line Yekaterinoslav–Tsaritsyn, gathered a strong cavalry group near Kharkov and broken through to the Volga to meet Kolchak. Sidorin criticised it too. Denikin replied that Kolchak’s armies had been retreating since mid-April and that the nearest units of the Ural Cossacks stood more than 300 versts from his troops.

On the other side of the front, too, it was understood that a decision was approaching. No later than 3 July Vladimir Lenin wrote the Central Committee letter “All out for the fight against Denikin!”, published on 9 July. It opened with the words: “This is one of the most critical, probably even the most critical moment for the socialist revolution.” The Whites did indeed march north. In summer and autumn they took Kiev and Kursk, and in October Oryol, about 350 kilometres from Moscow. There the offensive stopped, and a Red Army counter-blow and peasant risings in the rear forced the Whites to retreat.