The year 1919 would be the decisive year in the Russian Civil War.

The white armies would advance on Moscow and Petrograd,

and the fate of the revolution would hang in the balance.

Welcome to the history of the 20th century.

Music Episode 185,

1919, Russia, Part 3.

This is the 10th episode in our 1919 world tour, well, 10 already, and the third in our series on Russia.

In the previous episode, I brought you up to speed on the situation in Russia as of the beginning of 1919. I also went to

head into the story of 1919 a little bit. I described for you the view of Russia from the Paris Peace

Conference and William Bullets March 1919 mission to Russia and his return with a peace offer from Lenin

that the Allies rejected.

We looked at the 1919 advance of the Red Army westward in the wake of the retreating Germans.

We saw the consequences of that advance for Poland and the Baltic states in the episodes on those

countries, and we saw some of the consequences of the Red Army advance for Ukraine last time.

Today, I want to talk about the rest of the Civil War in 1919, particularly the fighting

between the Red Army and the White Movement. This year will be the decisive year for that conflict.

At the beginning of the year, the whites were divided into three separate forces in three

distant regions of the country. In the far north, around Wormonsk and Archangel, is the

northern force, commanded by Yvgeny Miller, and built around an allied force,

mostly British and American, that had landed in the northern ports last summer.

2,000 miles south, at the opposite end of the country, just north of the Caucasus, and between the Black Sea

and the Caspian Sea,

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