Russian Civil War with A&A minis

[Legbiter]

I think one could have quite a good Russian Civil War campaign with A&A minis. For game purposes we will accept the Bolshevik propaganda line that the Polish-Soviet war was part of the Russian Civil War.

Reds:
Moisin-Nagant
Cossack Captain
Commissar
Communist Partisans
Cossack [Red] Cavalry
SPECIAL RULE: A Red Army can never contain more officers than Commissars.
[optionally, Reds might include Hungarians - there was a Soviet Republic of Hungary but it didn't last long. Leave out their tanks and ATG, though].

Whites:
Cossack Captain
Cossack [White] Cavalry

Poles:
Polish Cavalry
Determined Infantry

Anybody:
Kuomintang Infantry
Kuomintang Officer
Kuomintang machine gun [the above 3 to represent poorly-trained and demoralised conscripts on all sides]
Japanese Armoured Car [to represent Austin-Putilovs etc]
Barbed Wire, minefields and pillboxes

Freikorps:
German Mauser KAR

Interventionists:
Bold Captain
1939 French Infantry

No tanks or planes for anyone. Not that these took NO part in the RCW, just that we don't have pieces for them [also, except in the Soviet-Polish war, and on the Polish side, their contribution was negligible].

Further Reading:
A People's Tragedy by Orlando Figes
White Eagle Red Star by Norman Davies
Osprey books on Red Armies, White Armies, Red Armoured Units, White Armoured Units and Freikorps
The White Guard by Mikhail Bulgakov
Red Cavalry by Isaac Babel
Dr Zhivago by Vladimir Nabokov
And Quiet Flows the Don/The Don Flows Home to the Sea by Mikhail Sholokov. [Or possibly not. There was a controversy about plagiarism around Sholokov's books IIRC.]

[Grenzewolf]

Legbiter, Great idea. How about adding some historical back-ground and your impressions. Clearly you've done some home work on this subject. I think one could argue the Russian civil war was the catalyst that shaped events in 20th century Europe more than any other.

[Legbiter]

Legbiter, Great idea. How about adding some historical back-ground and your impressions. Clearly you've done some home work on this subject. I think one could argue the Russian civil war was the catalyst that shaped events in 20th century Europe more than any other.

:) To Hear is to Obey! What follows is my own personal impressions and potted digest of the relevant facts.

BACKGROUND AND FACTIONS
The Russian Civil War, as Grenzewolf says, is arguably the key to understanding the twentieth century. It arose from the collapse of the Tsarist Empire in Russia, a slow process with many causes but immediately precipitated by military defeat in WW1. In essence it was a multi-sided conflict between the following major groups of protagonists:

[1] The "Reds", or Bolshevik [majority] faction of the Russian Social Democratic Party, led by the Siberian Russian Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov aka Lenin, who was a physical coward, German agent and pedantic bore, but also a man of great vision and clarity. His determination to push through the Communist party program was the reason why the Reds prevailed, since whatever one thought of the Bolsheviks it was clear to ordinary Russians that if they won, Russia would remain broadly intact and the fighting would stop. The same, as we shall see, could not fairly be said for the other parties. The initially poorly-trained Red Army was galvanised by the Jew Leon Bronstein aka Trotsky, a strategist of almost Napoleonic ability. Minor parts in the drama were played by the Georgian Joseph Vissarionivitch Dzughasvilli aka Stalin and Semyon Budyenny, founder of the Red Cavalry and also of a breed of fine cavalry horses. The future Marshal Zhukov and the former General Brusilov also fought with the Reds. The chaotic military organisation of the early red army included soldiers having the power to vote on tactical issues and political commissars being able to overrule and/or shoot officers suspected of bourgeois sympathies.

[2] The Whites, united only by their dislike of the Reds. These ranged from the extreme left Social Revolutionaries [actually split between white and red factions during the war] through recognisable modern Social Democrats [eg the Menshevik or minority party] to Monarchists and finally the Far Right. Vastly outnumbered for most of the time, the Whites fielded elite regiments overwhelmingly comprising former Tsarist officers.

[3] Nationalist groups interested in establishing their independence from the former Tsarist Empire. The Poles, Balts and Finns were successful while the Ukrainians and Georgians were not.

[4] Outside powers, the "Interventionists", interested initially in trying to keep Russia in the war, and later in trying to prevent the spread of Bolshevism. The Americans and British intervened in North Russia, the French in the south, and Japan in the east. Poland moved from category 3 to 4 during the war when it invaded the Ukraine.

In addition to these major factions, fascinating cameo roles were played by the Greens [Anarchists and Peasant revolutionaries who were not finally defeated until the 1950s], the Czech Legion, initially allies of the Bolsheviks but later not, the Hungarian Soviet Republic [crushed by its neighbours] and the German Freikorps, former German soldiers with various agendas [not all proto-Nazi] that led to them continuing to fight in Eastern Europe.

POTTED HISTORY
The Russian Civil War began in 1917 and is generally considered to have ended in 1926. In the first year of the war things went very badly for the Reds and it looked as if converging advances from the South, East, West and North would strangle the Soviet state at birth. As it turned out the Soviet state survived, partly because of Trotsky's military genius and partly because ordinary working class people all over the world, including Interventionist soldiers, did not really feel like squashing the world's first workers' state. In this period Finland and Poland achieved de facto independence from Russia.

From 1920-21 the Reds advanced steadily, helped by divisions among their enemies. A Workers' Republic of the Ukraine was overthrown by Nationalists who in turn were overthrown by other Nationalists and then by the Poles. The Reds under Tukachevsky now attacked and drove the Poles right back to Warsaw, where the Poles won a great victory in the "Miracle on the Vistula". This was the only campaign where air power played much of a role. The Polish airforce, flying an amazingly motley collection of machines, established complete air superiority. Romantic and/or indigent American fliers fought with the Poles, flying German Albatros DIII's and ONE Sopwith Camel, as well as modern Albatros 2-seater attack planes. One of the fliers with this "Kosciusko" squadron was the future director of King Kong, Merian C Cooper. Shot down and captured by the Reds he knew that he would be executed at once if exposed as an officer. He was interrogated by Isaac Babel, then a journalist with the Red Cavalry newspaper. Obviously Cooper managed to convince Babel that he was a horny-handed son of airborne toil, and the rest is, erm, history. In the form of gigantic monkeys shinning up the Empire State Building and getting machine-gunned by biplanes.

From 1921-6 the Reds were involved in mopping up operations and some unsuccessful attempts to spread the revolution in various directions but mostly towards the South and East [earlier Soviet revolts in Hungary and Germany had already been crushed]. An excellent book about that period is Setting the East Ablaze by Peter Hopkirk.

TACTICS AND USING A&A MINIS AS RCW UNITS
Tactically the fighting in the RCW was fluid and cavalry, armoured cars and armoured trains played leading roles. Tanks did take part [on one famous occasion FT17's disguised as haystacks succeeded in ambushing and routing the Red Cavalry] but were not decisive and furthermore we do not have appropriate models to represent the tanks of WW1 among the current A&A minis releases: the same goes for aircraft. Few of the soldiers fighting were highly-motivated so the Kuomintang units are representative of the average conscript on all sides.

Armoured trains, so crucial to the RCW, might I suppose be represented by chains of, say, 3 pill-boxes, able to move 1 but only along roads [railways], and the whole chain stopped by the destruction of one pill-box.

SMGs had been invented in WW1 but were not standard infantry issue during the RCW so it is not appropriate to use A&A minis that are obviously armed with one. The same goes for steel helmets [an exception might and has been made for interventionists].

WHY IT MATTERED
The RCW taught the Communists [and Russians in general] to fear war and to anticipate attack. It is almost impossible to overstate how bad this war and its aftermath were for the ordinary denizen of Eastern Europe. It also taught the people of Western Europe and America how scary the Armed Working Class could be. Hence, perhaps, the rise of Fascism. As Grenzewolf says, therefore, the formative event of the twentieth century, from which so much extra unpleasantness would flow.

[Legbiter]

UNIFORMS AND INSIGNIA
One of the great things about the RCW and A&A minis is that you get to customise all those visually-boring and virtually-useless Kuomintang units and Japanese Armoured Cars. There are free 15mm RCW flags on the net at http://www.hodgenet.co.uk/RCW/flags.htm, attachable to a needle glued on to your armoured car. Cyrillic slogans such as "Work", "Victor", "For Holy Mother Russia!" and "Death to the Bourgeoisie!" are also available or may be researched by chatting up one's Russian friends. [With luck, they won't feed you the slogan that says "Kick My Owner! He is a Great Big Nerd!" :)] Your Kuomintang units can be enhanced by Red or White arm-bands, painted entirely black to represent elite Cadet units, given pink trousers and cream-coloured tops to represent other elite White Units [the so-called "Coloured" regiments], or, if you want to make them Ukrainian Nationalists, you can paint them bright blue. One reason why the Kuomintang units are so good for this is that White Russian Units did actually end up fighting for the Chinese, and the Chinese uniform is similar to that generally worn during the RCW.

[Legbiter]

HATS
The Shlem, as modelled by the A&A minis Moisin-Nagants, was originally designed by fanciful Tsarist military tailors to stimulate patriotism: it is meant to be a felt model of the helmets worn by the Russian Knights under Alexander Nevsky and Kulikov who defeated the Teutonic order and the Golden Horde. When the revolution came these uniforms hadn't been issued so the Bolsheviks acquired them, sewed on big cloth stars [blue for cavalry, red for infantry, yellow for artillery, sometimes with a little red enamelled metal star in the middle] and that's how they became the iconic revolutionary hat. A Shlem is also called Budyennovka, after Semyon Budyenny, founder of the Red Cavalry and friend of Stalin.

AMAZING CAMOUFLAGE SCHEMES
Artists and intellectuals generally supported the Reds. Avant-garde artists did absolutely amazing things with Soviet armoured cars, trains, tanks and aircraft. Use your imagination, or look up some examples on the net!

[horacus]

Great info. Very good work sir. I will try something similar.

[Legbiter]

FILMS
The RCW spawned some incredible pieces of cinematography. Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin maybe is the best, but it is in fact supposed to be about the 1905 revolution. Arsenal, about events in the Ukraine, is perhaps the weirdest, and the most chilling. We Are From Kronstadt is an amazing movie, iconic in all sorts of ways. Storm in the East is another classic, but difficult to watch because all the extant prints are incredibly poor. I haven't managed to watch Captain Conan, a French movie about the intervention in the Crimea. Dr Zhivago is the one everyone knows about, and none the worse for that.

[fifleche]

Legbiter, great article. You got me interested deeply in this, many thanks!

[Lettische_Scooterist]

:)

[3] Nationalist groups interested in establishing their independence from the former Tsarist Empire. The Poles and Finns were successful while the Ukrainians and Balts were not.


Erm... The Balts (Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians) were sucessful. They were independent between the wars. :)

[polish_horsy]

did either side have anything that would work with a Panzer II C? That seems like 1917 equipment to me.

[Legbiter]

Erm... The Balts (Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians) were sucessful. They were independent between the wars. :)

Yes, quite right. My error, thank-you for pointing it out! Correcting original post.

[Legbiter]

did either side have anything that would work with a Panzer II C? That seems like 1917 equipment to me.

Not to my knowledge. To make the Panzer II worth playing in anything like an historical context you have to go to the Spanish Civil War, I think [vs T26's and BT5's]. That's DEFINITELY doable with A&A minis as we have them. Anthony Beevor's Spanish Civil War and the magisterial tome of the same name by Hugh Thomas are great sources for this - there is also a good Osprey book. Another option is the early part of the Japanese War against China. Germany [amongst others] equipped the Chinese so it is perfectly legitimate to give the Chinese early war crap German tanks and armoured cars. A LOOOONG time ago my son and I played a scenario of this sort, and it was reasonably good. I seem to recall that the tank-battle was won by the Japanese [weight of numbers], and I think that was also the overall outcome.

[Legbiter]

ORDER OF THE DAY: LEAVE THE TRAINS ALONE!!!!!
The birth of tank tactics was not an easy one. Many readers will know of the Riff tribes' discovery that an FT-17, deprived of infantry support, was relatively easily overpowered by the simple expedient of poking one's scimitar through the driver's viewing slit. Others will know that Ethiopian cavalry were able to defeat Italian tankettes by turning them upside down - in fact, the only reason we know this is that one Italian crew had the wit to cry out "Christians!" whilst surrendering [all the others were killed, because the Ethiopians, having lost a much-loved officer, had had a Bad Day]. But I wonder how many know that White Russian Tankers in the RCW had to be issued with strict orders NOT to engage Armoured Trains. This came about because a White MkV took part in a duel with a Red train. The tank did not lose but it was felt that tanks were more valuable than trains, and so should not indulge themselves in such foolishness. Neither Fuller nor Guderian, I feel, would have put their names to such an order.

[PercyHobart]

Legbiter,
I'm glad you brought this subject up as it's one I didn't realise involved the combatants of WWI until late last year.
I bought a WWI game called Landships and there's a supplement to it which includes the RCW. Wikipedia filled in the rest.

It almost begs the creation of a WWI version of AAM. As with the discovery of the RCW, I believe people will be surprised to discover that WWI wasn't a boring slash-fest of trench warfare for 4 years.
Cambrai was the first battle where combined arms tactics was tried and whilst there was initial success, the gains could not be exploited because after having made the push the Allies hadn't followed up and prepared for a counter attack. Nor did the war start with trenches - nineteenth-century coloured uniforms and cavalry had an initial part in it all.

However, I do accept that in the CMG-world, the need to limit units by year of introduction would be a turn-off to the power gamers who'd prefer fielding Stormtroopers, DR1s, and AV1s rather than something a little more historical... *sigh* we can dream... :)

[thommieh]

I agree with mister Hobart that WW1 would make a great A&AM game. Also there would be a lot of new nations involved. I´d love a battle of Gallipoli scenario. For a great novel on Turkey during WW1 read Louis de Bernieres' Birds without wings.

[Legbiter]

Legbiter,
I'm glad you brought this subject up as it's one I didn't realise involved the combatants of WWI until late last year.
I bought a WWI game called Landships and there's a supplement to it which includes the RCW. Wikipedia filled in the rest.

It almost begs the creation of a WWI version of AAM. As with the discovery of the RCW, I believe people will be surprised to discover that WWI wasn't a boring slash-fest of trench warfare for 4 years.
Cambrai was the first battle where combined arms tactics was tried and whilst there was initial success, the gains could not be exploited because after having made the push the Allies hadn't followed up and prepared for a counter attack. Nor did the war start with trenches - nineteenth-century coloured uniforms and cavalry had an initial part in it all.

However, I do accept that in the CMG-world, the need to limit units by year of introduction would be a turn-off to the power gamers who'd prefer fielding Stormtroopers, DR1s, and AV1s rather than something a little more historical... *sigh* we can dream... :)

Testify, brother! Testify!

I completely agree with you but think it will be a while yet before the scales of Bolshevik propaganda fall from the world's and wargamers' eyes. By this Gnomic Statement I mean that our average fellow-citizen probably, if s/he understands the question at all, believes that WW1 was a pointless bloody shambles whereas the Russian Civil War was a Noble Enterprise in which the good guys eventually prevailed. I believe the opposite :)

Regardless, I think the RCW is something Wizards/AH/Hasbro could make money on. Why I think this is that it was a fluid war conducted by charming Romantic ruffians immaculately-dressed in well-cut trousers, tight-fitting boots and sexy hats. They had marvellous tanks, cavalry, armoured trains and cars, aircraft and Tchankas [take trotting-cart and add Maxim gun]. Most importantly of all, the RCW is popular with Russian Oligarchs who include some of the Wealthiest People on the planet [I know because my friend Tanya is married to one of them]. If/when Wizards see how right we are about this we will ALSO be able to recreate all the marvellous fluid campaigns of WW1. Of course some of them were not fluid and so are relatively uninteresting for wargaming purposes. The same is true of WW2. You do not see people furrowing their brows over how to recreate the Anzio beachhead experience!

Have I a personal agenda? You bet I do. My father's father, now deceased, was a quarter-master in the British Army in East Africa during WW1. There, he distinguished himself by embezzling the soldiers' jam, and had his house eaten by ants.