Yudenich outside Petrograd

On 20 October 1919 the White North-Western Army of General Nikolai Yudenich stood on a line running from Ligovo through Krasnoye Selo (PL) to Tsarskoye Selo, the former residence of the tsars. From the Pulkovo Heights, which were being fought over, the city could be seen. Leon Trotsky wrote that the Whites stood 10–15 versts from the capital of the revolution. During the night a false report of the city’s fall even spread, and was taken up by newspapers in Finland and abroad. Almost at the same moment, however, the turning point came. According to the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, the Red Army stopped the Whites at Pulkovo (PL) on 18–20 October and went over to the counter-attack in the following days.

The march from Estonia

The North-Western Army had been formed on Estonian soil. In the summer of 1919 Yudenich, appointed by Admiral Alexander Kolchak commander-in-chief on this front, took command of it, and under British pressure a North-Western government was formed which recognised Estonia’s independence. On 28 September the Whites began a diversionary attack near Pskov, and on 10 October the main blow against Petrograd was launched. The next day the Whites, helped by tanks, took Yamburg (Kingisepp), on 13 October Luga, and on 16 and 17 October Krasnoye Selo and Gatchina. At the start of the attack the army numbered about 18,500 bayonets and sabres, and by the end of October, after taking in prisoners and new conscripts, about 25,000. It was supported by the British, who had supplied the tanks, and their fleet operated at sea. The Estonians, with some 6,000 men on this sector, attacked the fort of Krasnaya Gorka on the Gulf of Finland on 17 October, but failed to take it. Facing the Whites was the Red 7th Army, which at the start of the fighting numbered just under 25,000 bayonets and 800 sabres.

The Whites failed to cut the railway from Moscow to Petrograd. The commander who was to do so near Tosno sent only one brigade there and directed his main forces towards Pavlovsk. Along this line the Reds brought up reinforcements, while from the south the Red 15th Army advanced against the Whites’ rear. Help from Latvia, where the Western Volunteer Army of Pavel Bermondt-Avalov stood, also failed to come. Despite Yudenich’s orders Bermondt did not march on Petrograd; instead, in October, he attacked Riga and tied down Latvian and Estonian forces and British warships.

Trotsky in Petrograd

According to Trotsky’s memoirs, Vladimir Lenin at first proposed giving up Petrograd and shortening the front, so as not to weaken the struggle against Anton Denikin in the south. Trotsky objected, arguing that once the city fell Yudenich would march on Moscow. After a long argument Lenin agreed. Trotsky arrived in Petrograd on 16 October according to his memoirs, and a day later according to other sources. He described the head of the local Bolsheviks, Grigory Zinoviev, as “panic itself”. He mobilised the party members, the factories and the barracks himself, divided the city into sectors, had trenches dug, barbed wire strung and barricades built, and in a draft order promised to fight in the streets “to the last drop of blood”. On 18 October at Alexandrovka he mounted a horse himself and turned a fleeing regiment back into the fight. By his reckoning about 40,000 soldiers and 453 guns were gathered in Petrograd.

Retreat

On 21 October the Reds held the line at Pulkovo, and the next day they went over to the attack. According to Trotsky, on the evening of 23 October they retook Tsarskoye Selo and Pavlovsk. The Whites tried to win back their positions, but under threat of encirclement they began to fall back. On the night of 3 November they abandoned Gatchina without a fight, and on 14 November the Reds entered Yamburg. The remnants of the army and tens of thousands of refugees streamed to the Estonian border. The Estonians disarmed the soldiers and held them in camps where typhus spread and people died in their hundreds. On 31 December Estonia concluded an armistice with Soviet Russia, and in January 1920 Yudenich disbanded his army.