Editing Anton Denikin (section)

== Civil War ==
{{See also|Political positions of Anton Denikin}}
[[File:Anton Denikin 1917 (est).png|thumb|upright|left|Denikin in 1918]]

Following the [[October Revolution]] both Denikin and Kornilov escaped to [[Novocherkassk]] in the Northern Caucasus and, with other Tsarist officers, formed the anti-[[Bolshevik]] [[Volunteer Army]], initially commanded by Alekseev. Kornilov was killed in April 1918 near [[Ekaterinodar]] and the Volunteer Army came under Denikin's command thanks in part to the support of fellow general [[Sergey Markov]]. Kornilov's disastrous attempt to take the city was finally cancelled and the army retreated towards the north-east, evading destruction and ending the campaign which would become known as the [[Ice March]]. There was some sentiment to place [[Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich of Russia (1856–1929)|Grand Duke Nicholas]] in overall command but Denikin was not interested in sharing power. In June–November 1918, Denikin launched the highly successful [[Second Kuban Campaign]] which gave him control of the entire area between the Black and Caspian Sea.<ref>{{cite web
 |author      = Yegorov, O.
 |url         = https://www.rbth.com/history/331476-russian-white-generals
 |title       = Meet Russian Imperial officers who almost stopped the Bolsheviks
 |publisher   = Russia Beyond the Headlines
 |date        = 27 December 2019
 |access-date = 29 January 2020
}}</ref>

[[File:Народ встречает Деникина и ВСЮР в Царицыне.jpg|thumb|A temporary takeover of the Tsaritsyn (present-day [[Volgograd]]) by Denikin's troops in July 1919]]
In the summer of 1919, Denikin led the assault of the southern White forces in their [[Advance on Moscow (1919)|final push to capture Moscow]]. For a time, it appeared that the [[White Army]] would succeed in its drive; [[Leon Trotsky]], as the supreme commander of the [[Red Army]], hastily concluded an agreement with [[Nestor Makhno]]'s anarchist [[Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine]] for mutual support. Makhno duly turned his Insurgent Army east and led it against Denikin's extended lines of supply, forcing the Whites to retreat. Denikin's army would be decisively [[Orel–Kursk operation|defeated at Orel]] in October 1919, some 360&nbsp;km south of Moscow.The White forces in southern Russia would be in constant retreat thereafter, eventually reaching the [[Crimean Peninsula|Crimea]] in March 1920.

[[File:Деникин на Николаевской площади Харькова июнь 1919.jpg|thumb|In the summer of 1919 Denikin's troops captured [[Kharkov]]]]
On 4 January 1920, with defeat and capture by the Bolsheviks in Siberia imminent, Admiral [[Alexander Kolchak]] named Denikin as his successor as Supreme Ruler (''Verkhovnyy Pravitel''), but Denikin accepted neither the functions nor the style of Supreme Leader.<ref>"Russian Civil War Polities". http://worldstatesmen.org/Russia_War.html {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240302034300/https://worldstatesmen.org/Russia_war.html |date=2 March 2024 }}</ref>

Meanwhile, the Soviet government immediately tore up its agreement with Makhno and attacked his anarchist forces. After a seesaw series of battles in which both sides gained ground, Trotsky's more numerous and better equipped Red Army troops decisively defeated and dispersed Makhno's Insurgent Army.

Although Denikin refused to recognise the independence of [[Azerbaijan Democratic Republic|Azerbaijan]] and [[Democratic Republic of Georgia|Georgia]], in maintaining friendly relations with [[First Republic of Armenia|Armenia]] he recognised their independence<ref name=":5">{{Cite book |last=Bechhofer Roberts |first=Carl Eric |title=In Denikin's Russia And The Caucasus, 1919-1920: Being A Record Of A Journey To South Russia, The Crimea, Armenia, Georgia, And Baku In 1919 And 1920 |year=1921 |pages=15–16 |quote=}}</ref> and supplied them with ammunition during the [[Muslim uprisings in Kars and Sharur–Nakhichevan]].<ref>{{Cite web |last=Mediamax |title=Հայաստանի կապերը Դենիկինի եւ Կոլչակի հետ |trans-title=Armenia's ties to Denikin and Kolchak |url=https://republic.mediamax.am/story/75 |access-date=2022-07-24 |website=Republic.Mediamax.am |language=hy}}</ref>

=== Antisemitism and anti-Masonry ===
[[File:Who Rules Moscow.png|thumb|left|White Russian propaganda poster "Who Rules Moscow? Here they are - Red Bolsheviks, Communists-Socialists, Proletarians", 1919. The poster presents caricatures of [[Yakov Sverdlov|Sverdlov]] and [[Leon Trotsky|Trotsky]] with the [[Star of David]], depicting the Bolsheviks as Jews oppressing Russians and striving for money and power]]
[[File:VictimOfInternational.jpg|thumb|left|White Russian anti-Bolshevik propaganda poster, c. 1919. Senior Bolsheviks ([[Yakov Sverdlov|Sverdlov]], [[Grigory Zinoviev|Zinoviev]], [[Lenin]], [[Leon Trotsky|Trotsky]], [[Lev Kamenev|Kamenev]], and [[Karl Radek|Radek]]) sacrifice an allegorical character representing Russia to a statue of [[Karl Marx]].]]
During the [[Russian Civil War]], an estimated 35,000 Jews and non-Jews were killed in [[Pogroms of the Russian Civil War|pogroms]] {{Citation needed|date=May 2025}}. Ukrainian forces, nominally under the control of [[Symon Petliura]], perpetrated approximately 40 percent of the recorded pogroms.<ref>[http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Russian_Civil_War, ''The YIVO encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe by YIVO institute for Jewish Research''.]</ref> The White Army is associated with 17 percent of the attacks, and was generally responsible for the most active propaganda campaign against Jews, whom they openly associated with communism.<ref>{{cite encyclopedia|year=1961|encyclopedia=Encyclopedia of Russia and the Soviet Union|publisher=McGraw-Hill|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=x6RAAAAAYAAJ|access-date=12 July 2013|last=Florinsky|first=Michael T.|title=McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Russia and the Soviet Union}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=B0jHwhsSNfQC|title=The Furies|last=Mayer|first=Arno J.|publisher=Princeton University Press|year=2000|isbn=9780691090153|page=520|access-date=12 July 2013}}</ref> The Red Army is blamed for 9 percent of the pogroms.

In the territories it occupied, Denikin's army carried out mass executions and plunder against civillians. This would later be known as the [[White Terror (Russia)|White Terror]]. During September 1918, more than 2,500 peasants were massacred by General [[Viktor Pokrovsky|Viktor Pokrovsky's]] forces in the town of [[Maykop]] in Circassia, and more than 1,500 peasants were massacred by [[Ataman]] [[Boris Annenkov]] in the Slavgorod district.<ref>[http://www.gumer.info/bibliotek_Buks/History/Rat/04.php История советской России']; Ратьковский, И.С.; Ходяков, М.В.; Изд-во: СПб: Лань, 2001 г.; {{ISBN|5-8114-0373-9}}. С. 57</ref> These massacres targeted civillian supporters of the Red Army and prisoners of war.

The press of the Denikin regime regularly incited violence against communist Jews and Jews seen as communists in the context of treason committed by [[Cheka|Red agents]]. For example, a proclamation by one of Denikin's generals incited people to "arm themselves" in order to extirpate "the evil force which lives in the hearts of [[Jewish Bolshevism|Jew-communists]]."<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=T3D7CmSOMfIC|title=Pogroms: Anti-Jewish Violence in Modern Russian History|first1=John Doyle|last1=Klier|first2=Shlomo|last2=Lambroza|date=12 February 2004|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=9780521528511|via=Google Books}}</ref>

Denikin criticised the pogroms against the Jewish population, especially at the height of the pogroms in 1919. However, many of his officers were intensely anti-Semitic and allowed pogroms under their watch.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Pipes |first=Richard |url=https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781315037509-17/ukrainian-pogroms-russian-civil-war-richard-pipes |title=The Ukrainian Pogroms during the Russian Civil War |year=1997 |isbn=9781315037509 |edition=1st}}</ref>

Western sponsors were dismayed at the widespread antisemitism in the Whites' officer ranks, especially as the Bolsheviks sought to officially prohibit acts of anti-Semitism. [[Winston Churchill]] personally warned General Denikin that:

{{blockquote|[M]y task in winning support in Parliament for the Russian Nationalist cause will be infinitely harder if well-authenticated complaints continue to be received from Jews in the zone of the Volunteer Armies.<ref>Kenez, Peter, "The Ideology of the White Movement," Soviet Studies, 1980, no. 32. pp.&nbsp;58–83. Christopher Lazarski, "White Propaganda Efforts in the South during the Russian Civil War, 1918-19 (The Alekseev-Denikin Period)," The Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 70, No. 4 (Oct., 1992), pp.&nbsp;688–707. Viktor G. Bortnevski, "White Administration and White Terror (The Denikin Period)," Russian Review, Vol. 52, No. 3 (Jul., 1993), pp.&nbsp;354–366.</ref>}}

John Ernest Hodgson, a British war correspondent with Denikin's forces, said the following of Denikin's and his officers' antisemitism:

{{blockquote|I had not been with Denikin more than a month before I was forced to the conclusion that the Jew represented a very big element in the Russian upheaval. The officers and men of the Army laid practically all the blame for their country's troubles on the Hebrew. They held that the whole cataclysm had been engineered by some great and mysterious secret society of international Jews, who, in the pay and at the orders of Germany, had seized the psychological moment and snatched the reins of government. All the figures and facts that were then available appeared to lend colour to this contention. No less than 82 per cent of the Bolshevik Commissars were known to be Jews, the fierce and implacable 'Trotsky,' who shared office with Lenin, being a Yiddisher whose real name was Bronstein. Among Denikin's officers this idea was an obsession of such terrible bitterness and insistency as to lead them into making statements of the wildest and most fantastic character. Many of them had persuaded themselves that [[Freemasonry]] was, in [[Masonic conspiracy theories|alliance with the Jews]], part and parcel of the Bolshevik machine, and that what they had called the diabolical schemes for Russia's downfall had been hatched in the [[Saint Petersburg|Petrograd]] and Moscow [[Masonic lodge]]s. When I told them that I and most of my best friends were Freemasons, and that England owed a great deal to its loyal Jews, they stared at me askance and sadly shook their heads in fear for England's credulity in trusting the chosen race. One even asked me quietly whether I personally was a Jew. When America showed herself decidedly against any kind of interference in Russia, the idea soon gained wide credence that President [[Woodrow Wilson]] was a Jew, while Mr. [[David Lloyd George|Lloyd George]] was referred to as a Jew whenever a cable from England appeared to show him as being lukewarm in support of the anti-Bolsheviks.<ref>John Ernest Hodgson ("War Correspondent with the Anti-Bolshevik Forces"), "With Denikin's Armies: Being a Description of the Cossack Counter-Revolution in South Russia, 1918-1920", Temple Bar Publishing Co., London, 1932, pp. 54-56.</ref>}}