Thread by @KyleWOrton

#Russia's civil war was to all intents and purposes over by autumn 1919, though the main phase of fighting only ended a year later. A pocket of resistance against the Bolsheviks held out until June 1923, however <Thread>

The defeat of #Denikin's offensive on Moscow in the west and #Kolchak's offensive from the east in late 1919 ended any serious threat to the Bolsheviks. Kolchak was murdered in FEB 1920 and the remnants of Denikin's Army, now under #Wrangel, evacuated from Crimea in NOV 1920.

In Sept. 1921, Yakutia rose in revolt and a Volunteer Army commander, Mikhail Korobeinikov took the lead, expanding the pocket, and in March 1922 announced the establishment of an interim administration, the "Provisional Yakut Regional People's Government".

The Yakutia pocket of "Whites" was able to appeal for help from another resistance pocket based around Vladivostok, the "Provisional Priamurye Government", which was composed of what was left of the Volunteer Army unit led by Vladimir Kappel, a commander under Adm. Kolchak.

Kappel himself had died in January 1920, having literally fallen to pieces leading an expedition through the Siberian winter to try to rescue Kolchak after he was captured. Kappel fell through an ice sheet and had to have fingers and a foot amputated.

https://twitter.com/KyleWOrton/status/1443126847848398852

The "Priamur Government" in Vladivostok relied on Japanese troops for its existence, and in June 1922 came under military rule from Mikhail Diterikhs, probably the Volunteer Army commander who comports most closely to the Bolshevik propaganda about the "White" movement.

In the summer of 1922, Diterikhs declared his pocket in Vladivostok to have a "Zemsky Sobor" (an archaic name for a parliament), with Patriarch Tikhon as chairman (Tikhon had specifically *refused* to bless the Volunteers), and named Grand Duke Nikolayevich as the restored Tsar.

Korobeinikov's first appeal for help to the Yakutia pocket from Diterikhs administration in Vladivostok went unanswered; the second, in summer 1922, was answered, with General Anatoly Pepelyayev sailing a small fleet up the coast in late August and disembarking at Ayan on Sept. 2

Pepelyayev helped the Yakutia pocket gain some ground, but just as it took Nelkan in late October 1922, the Priamur Government in Vladivostok collapsed: Japan withdrew and the Bolsheviks had made short work of Diterikhs, forcing an evacuation akin to Wrangel's two years earlier.

Pepelyayev's pocket in the Far East (Ayan, Okhotsk, Nelkan) now held out for nine more months, meaning that when the Soviet Union was formally created by the treaty in December 1922, there was still a zone of free Russia on the Bolsheviks' nominal territory.

The Red Army expedition to crush the final "White" pocket in the Far East under Pepelyayev began in February 1923 and by June 1923 it was all over.

Incredibly, Pepelyayev's death sentence was commuted and in 1936 he was released. He did not last long. In January 1938, as part of Yezhovshchina, Pepelyayev was shot by the NKVD, alongside the Bolshevik officer who had defeated him in 1923, Ivan Strod.

https://twitter.com/KyleWOrton/status/1443130770369892363

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