All language subtitles for [English (United States)] The Last Stand of the White Army_ Russian Civil War 1920 [DownSub.com]

March 1920, Novarosis, Black Sea coast. In the
dead of night, a cacophony of shouts and panicked

footsteps echoes along the docks. Thousands of
haggarded soldiers and terrified civilians surge

towards the last ships, their breath freezing
in the sea air. Families clutch meager bundles.

Officers bark desperate orders and wounded men
limp or are carried hoping not to be abandoned.

Fires rage in the harbor. The whites are torching
supply depots and even their own vehicles to deny

them to the enemy. Amid the chaos, a few exhausted
figures stop and gaze back inland. There, not far

beyond the hills, they see the reddish glow of
Bolevik artillery on the horizon. The Red Army is

closing in on Novarosis, and the old once proud
white armies of the South are now in a frenzied

flight to the sea. A year ago, they were at the
gates of Moscow. Now, they're running for the

sea. They came within inches of victory, and then
everything collapsed. How did it come to this?

just months before the anti-Bolleshevik white
[music] forces encircled the reds on a map like

a tightening ring of fire. By mid 1919, Lenin and
his Soviet government in Moscow faced existential

threats on all sides. In the west and south, rival
armies and nationalist insurgents. In the north

and east, foreign backed troops and white generals
advancing relentlessly. Many in the West openly

predicted the Soviet regime would soon fall.
Newspapers from London to Paris ran headlines

anticipating a Bolevik [music] collapse. With
the Reds seemingly cornered, it looked like the

Russian civil war might end with a white victory
and the overthrow of Lenin's revolution. And if

you missed part one, that's where it all began.
the revolutions of 1917, the collapse of the

old empire, the rise of the Bolsheviks, and the
first chaotic year of civil war when reds, whites,

nationalists, and foreign powers all collided
as Russia fractured. You'll see the link in

the corner. But that outcome never came. Instead,
in the latter half of 1919, the tide turned with

stunning speed. By early 1920, the Bolsheviks were
triumphant and their enemies were in ruins. In

this episode, we dive into the climactic chapter
of the Russian Civil War, part two, total war.

We'll witness how the Bolshevixs managed to snatch
victory from the jaws of defeat through relentless

organization and brutality, and why the white
movement's grand crusade disintegrated into panic

and exodus. Our journey spans the vast killing
fields of Siberia, the approaches to Petrorad, the

rolling step of Ukraine and southern Russia, and
finally the desperate last stand in Crimea. The

year is 1919. The stage is set for total war. In
early 1919, the white movement in Siberia rallied

behind one man, Admiral Alexander Kchek. He was a
decorated naval officer, 45 years old, sharpeyed

and severe, who had reinvented himself as a
political savior. In Omsk, an isolated city on the

Trans Siberian railway, Kolch became the face of
an anti-Bolleshevik state on the edge of the map.

His rise was not a vote, it was a coup. In late
1918, a fragile antibbolshevik coalition governed

Siberia. Liberals, social revolutionaries,
regional politicians, and military men,

all united only by hatred of the Reds. Kolch and
his allies swept that messy politics aside. Rivals

were arrested, newspapers were censored, and he
declared himself the supreme ruler of Russia.

In theory, this gave the White cause something
it desperately lacked. A single authority,

a government, and a claim to legitimacy.
In practice, [music] it locked the Siberian

whites into a hardline project, central command,
political repression, and the promise of restoring

the old state. Kchack also held something even
more tangible. The Imperial Gold Reserve. train

loads of bullion. Russia's fallen treasure sat
behind his lines, guarded along the railway. With

gold, you could buy rifles abroad, pay troops,
and keep an administration alive. [music] But in

Siberia, that gold became poison as well as power.
It fed corruption, speculation, and inflation.

Officials printed currency. Officers took loans
that were never repaid. and black markets bloomed

in every rail town. In a war where trust was life,
that rot mattered. Foreign support existed, but it

was conditional and unstable. British and French
missions offered supplies, advisers, [music] and

political recognition in exchange for an
anti-Bolleshevik front. Americans guarded

infrastructure and watched wearily. Japan occupied
parts of the Far East for its own interests.

Everyone had their own agenda, and none were
willing to gamble unlimited blood and treasure

on a Siberian regime that looked authoritarian,
divided, and increasingly unpopular. Yet, in the

winter and spring of 1919, Kolch's prospects
looked real. His armies, Thorist officers,

Kasac cavalry, and drafted peasants launched
a massive offensive westward. In March 1919,

white columns surged out of the Eurals, punching
into red territory and seizing key cities like

Ufffa. The advance looked unstoppable on a map.
The Reds were pushed back hundreds of miles. And

for a moment it seemed the civil war might
be decided by a pinsir. Kolch from the east,

Denikin from the south, Udenich threatening
Petrorad in the northwest. Moscow squeezed.

Lenin [music] cornered. The revolution strangled.
Western observers started talking like the end was

near. Allied officers sent optimistic reports.
Newspapers spoke openly of a Bolevik collapse.

In the language of 1919, it felt like the
anti-Bolleshevik forces were finally coordinating,

at least by momentum, if not by strategy. But
the deeper Colch advanced, the more his gains

outpaced reality. Siberia is not Europe. Distances
are measured in weeks, not days. And everything

depends on a single artery, the Trans Siberian
Railway. Every shell, every sack of flour, every

replacement rifle had to move along that thin
steel line. If the line breaks, the army dies.

The Boleviks understood this perfectly. Partisans
tore up rails, sabotaged bridges, [music] ambushed

supply trains, cut telegraph wires, and vanished
into forests and villages. A white battalion

could win a battle at the front and lose the war
behind it. Then came the land question, the issue

that poisoned Kolchuk's relationship with ordinary
people. Kolchuk's government spoke the language of

lawful property and restoring order. To peasants,
that sounded like one thing, landlords returning.

Many settlers in Siberia had fled the [music]
estate system in European Russia to carve out

free homesteads on the frontier. Now, [music]
white decrees hinted that those gains could

be reversed or at least questioned. At the
same time, Kchchuk's agents demanded grain,

horses, [music] and recruits with a heavy hand.
Requisition squads moved through villages with

rifles and lists. Draft officers arrived with
threats. The message was clear. The state is

back and it wants payment. Kchuk's officers also
carried the habits of the old army into a new kind

of war. Summary courts, field hangings, and
cleansing operations against suspected reds

became common along the railway. In cities, police
raids targeted socialist activists, trade unions,

and anyone accused of bolevik agitation. To
white commanders, this was counterinsurgency.

To ordinary people, it felt like the return of a
regime that answered every question with a whip,

a cell, or a firing squad. And every time a
village was punished, another village decided

the whites were not order, but occupation. So
Siberia began to rise. Not for the reds, not

for the whites, but for itself. Green partisans,
peasant guerrillas, leftist rebels, local bands

with their own grunges turned the White Rear into
a war zone. They attacked isolated garrisons,

assassinated officials, seized towns, and made
travel deadly. They were not disciplined armies.

They were rage with rifles. Kchuk responded
with terror, punitive expeditions, executions,

hostage taking, collective punishments. But in a
civil war, terror is a multiplier. It multiplies

resistance as much as fear. The harsher the
punishments, the wider the rebellion spread.

The rear began to devour the front. By late
spring 1919, the Red Army was ready to punish

every weakness at once. Under commanders like
male Frun, Red forces counterattacked along the

eastern front. The Reds [music] had two advantages
that mattered more than heroism. Organization and

interior lines. They could concentrate forces
faster than Kolch could rotate exhausted units

and keep supplies moving because their rail hubs
were closer to the heartland. Kolch's offensive

stalled. Then it cracked. And once it cracked,
[music] the retreat became a collapse. The fall

of s in November 1919 was the psychological death
blow. White ministries [music] fled so fast they

left offices in mid work, supplies in warehouses,
even meals abandoned on tables. Refugees flooded

eastward. Officers [music] families, civil
servants, merchants, anyone who feared

Bolevik revenge. Trains became rolling prisons of
desperation, overcrowded wagons, typhus, hunger,

guards trying to hold doors against people begging
to climb aboard. What followed became known as

the [music] Great Siberian Ice March, one of
the grimmst retreats of the entire war. Some

escaped by rail, many could not. They walked along
the line on foot or sled, moving through winter

darkness while partisans struck behind them and
red cavalry pressed from the west. Temperatures

plunged far below freezing. Men froze upright in
the snow. Horses collapsed and were butchered for

meat. Stragglers vanished in forests, taken by
bandits, by disease, or by the simple arithmetic

of cold. And above this nightmare hung one final
symbol, the gold trains. Kchack's last loyalists

tried to keep the bullion moving east because
gold meant leverage. One last bargaining chip

with foreigners, one last promise that the white
cause still had a future. But the war had changed.

The allies were tired, divided, and increasingly
unwilling to pour men and money into Russia. And

the Czechoslovak Legion, tens of thousands of
Czech [music] and Slovak soldiers stranded across

Siberia since 1918, wanted one thing above
all else, to go home. They controlled long

stretches of track and held the [music] power
to decide who could move and who could not.

In January 1920, Kolch's shattered entourage
reached Irkutsk and found betrayal waiting. To

secure safe passage to Vladivosto and onto ships,
Czech leaders negotiated with Kolch's enemies. The

price was Kolch and what remained of the Imperial
Gold Reserve. Kolch was arrested. His authority,

his [music] army, and his allies evaporated in
a single stroke. In February 1920, on a frigid

morning, the Bolsheviks executed [music] the
Supreme Ruler by firing squad. His body was

disposed of beneath the ice of the Angara River,
an ending [music] as cold and final as the retreat

that preceded it. With Colchack's death, the
Eastern White Project shattered into fragments,

scattered garrisons, fleeing officers, warlords
in distant towns, and a wilderness of insurgents.

The dream of squeezing Moscow from Siberia ended
not in a final heroic battle, but in corruption,

peasant war, and a frozen retreat across an
empire of snow. While Denin's armies thundered

north towards Moscow, a second white threat rose
at the opposite end of the map towards Petrorad,

the city where the revolution had been born.
This front was led by General Nikolai Udinich,

a celebrated Tsarist commander from World War I,
operating from the new borderlands of the Baltic.

By 1919, Petrorad was no longer Russia's capital,
but it was still the Bolevik's sacred symbol. Lose

it and the world would see the revolution bleeding
out in its own birthplace. For the whites,

taking Petrorad promised a shock bigger than
any victory on a distant step. It could fracture

Bolshevik morale, inflame anti-red uprisings, and
just as important, force Moscow to divert troops

away from Denakin's drive. Udinich's problem was
scale. His northwest army was tiny compared to the

massive formations fighting in the south and east.
Roughly 15 to 18,000 men at its peak, many of them

veterans, officers, and volunteers. hardened but
under supplied. He could not win by attrition. He

needed speed, surprise, and a clean blow to the
jugular. Support came from an uneasy coalition.

Britain eager to strangle Bulcheism shipped
rifles, shells, uniforms, and a handful of Mark

5 tanks, leftover steel monsters from the Western
Front. The Royal Navy cruised the Baltic, its guns

a distant threat. But Estonia and Finland, whose
territory and rail lines Udinich depended on,

were not fighting for one and indivisible Russia.
They were fighting for their own independence. And

they feared becoming collateral damage if Udnich
failed. In early October 1919, Udnich struck.

His columns pushed out from Estonia, slamming into
thin red defenses. Towns fell in quick succession.

Yamburgg was taken, rail lines were cut, and
Petrograd's outer approaches suddenly looked

exposed. It felt like 1917 in reverse. White
officers climbed the Pulkavo Heights, the last

rise before the city, and through binoculars they
saw Petrograd's distant domes and spires glinting

under an autumn sky. The city was in sight.
Inside Petrorad, the panic was real. The Bolevixs

had stripped the city of experienced units to
defend Moscow and fight Denon. Food was scarce,

industry half paralyzed, and the population
exhausted from years of war. The leadership

debated evacuation. Lenin himself reportedly
weighed the unthinkable. Could they abandon

the city that had launched their revolution?
This is where Leon Trosky enters the story.

Trosky, commisar of war, arrived in Petrorad
in his armored train, half headquarters, half

traveling propaganda machine. He did not simply
coordinate. He performed command. He bullied,

inspired, threatened, and reorganized. He armed
factory workers, rallied sailors from Kronstad,

and dragged shattered units back into the line.
Most crucially, Trosky exploited a white mistake.

Udinich's advance had not fully severed every
rail connection into the city. A secondary line

remained open, and through that narrow artery,
trains from Moscow began pouring men, ammunition,

and field guns into Petrorad. The city's
defenders multiplied almost overnight. Every

hour that Udinich hesitated was an hour Trosky
used to weld together a new front. Discipline,

propaganda, and sheer fear of retreat. Meanwhile,
the white wonder weapons had limits. The Mark

5 tanks were terrifying to red troops who had
never faced armor, but there were only a few of

them. They broke down often. Fuel and spare parts
were scarce. tanks could crush a forward trench,

but they could not replace infantry, supply, and
numbers. By midocctober, Udenich's spearheads were

close enough that artillery could be heard in the
streets. But closeness is not capture. Petrorad's

defenses thickened by the day. The whites lacked
the manpower to encircle the city, and as their

supply lines stretched back through hostile
countryside, their offensive began to slow,

then stall. On October 21st, 1919, Trosky launched
the counterblow. Red forces hit Udenich's units on

the approaches to Petrorad and pressed his flanks,
turning the white thrust into a narrow corridor

under constant pressure. Fighting raged around
the Pulovo Heights and the imperial suburbs,

Sarsco, Cello, Pavlovsk, places whose names
still carried the ghost of the old regime.

The weather turned wet and cold. Roads became mud.
Wounded men froze where they fell. Udenich's army,

already too small, began to bleed out. The retreat
came fast. [music] The northwest army fell back

toward Estonia, hungry, exhausted, and short on
ammunition. And now the political trap snapped

shut. Estonia had its own war to finish and a
peace to secure. The last thing Talin wanted was

a furious red army following Udenich across the
border. Bolevik diplomats understood that fear

and offered recognition, trade, and a way out. In
the calculus of a small new state, sheltering a

defeated Russian army was not heroism. It was
suicide. So when Udenich's men stumbled into

Estonia, the Estonian government disarmed them.
The white army that had nearly reached Petrograd,

this ghost army that had appeared out of the
Baltic fog, was dissolved by politics as much

as by bullets. Soldiers were interned in camps
and many drifted into exile. Udenich himself

was pushed out of the game, a commander without
a country and without an [music] army. Petrorad

survived, and that mattered far beyond the city
limits. Once the northern danger was extinguished,

the Bolsheviks could shift forces southward
towards the true decisive theater. Every trainload

of troops that no longer had to defend Petrograd
could now be sent against Denkin. The ring that

had seemed to tighten around Moscow in 1919 would
begin to loosen, then reverse, and the whites,

who had been so close on three fronts, Siberia,
Petrorad, and the southern road to Moscow,

would discover a brutal truth. In a total war,
being close is not enough. Throughout 1919,

the greatest danger to Lenin's Soviet regime
came from the south. There, General Anton

Denikin led the armed forces of South Russia, a
white coalition made up of the volunteer army,

powerful Dawn and Kuban Kasac hosts, and regional
units that rallied behind the antibbolshevik

cause. By mid 1919, Denin commanded the largest
white force anywhere in the former empire.

well over a 100,000 men at its peak with strong
cavalry, armored trains, and a handful of allied

supplied tanks and equipment. His troops were
hardened by months of victories. Denikin himself

wasn't a charismatic showman like Trosky. He was
blunt, disciplined, and respected as a serious

commander. After Cornelov's death in 1918, Denikin
became the main white warlord in European Russia.

In June 1919, riding a wave of success, Denin
made the decision that would define the war

in the south. He issued what became known as the
Moscow directive, a strategic order that pointed

the entire white machine straight north toward
Moscow, the heart of Bolevik power. Denin believed

that if the whites took Moscow, the Soviet regime
would collapse like a tent with its central pole

snapped. It was bold. It was daring. And for a
moment, it looked terrifyingly possible. Denin's

forces were spread across a wide front, but they
were winning. In the east of the southern theater,

his ally, General Vangle, captured Sariten on the
Vulga, today's Vulgrod, cutting a key red artery.

In the center, Denakin's volunteer army swept
through eastern Ukraine and took Harkov,

a major industrial prize. In the west, white
forces pushed into the Black Sea region, Odessa,

and much of right bank Ukraine fell under white
control after French intervention forces withdrew,

leaving a vacuum the whites rushed to fill. The
Red Southern front staggered [music] backward

towards central Urussia. And this is where
the Ukraine timeline has to be crystal clear

because in 1919, Ukraine wasn't one front.
It was a war inside the war. After Germany's

collapse and withdrawal at the end of 1918, the
Boleviks surged back into Ukraine. In early 1919,

Red forces seized major cities again, including
Keefe, and they pushed Ukrainian national forces

under Simon Petulora westward. So by the first
half of 1919, much of central Ukraine was under

Bolevik control until Denakin's summer offensive
shattered the balance. By July and August 1919,

Denakin's armies surged north like a rolling
storm. Town after town fell, moving by rail

and horseback. White columns advanced hundreds of
miles in a matter of weeks. By late summer, the

whites reached Kev, but they didn't simply take
it from nowhere. In August 1919, Ukrainian forces

together with other Ukrainian units fighting the
Reds captured Kev from the Boleviks. For a moment,

it looked like the city might become a nationalist
capital [music] again. Then, Denin arrived. White

troops marched into Kev and immediately treated
Petura not as an ally, but as a problem. Denikin

refused any compromise on Ukrainian autonomy. His
slogan was Russia one and indivisible. To him,

Peter's government wasn't a partner. It was
a separatist rebellion. The result was brutal

political logic. The whites pushed Peter's troops
aside and raised the old Russian tririccolor over

Keefe. That single decision would echo across
Ukraine. Many locals, especially non-Russian

groups, heard the whites promising the return of a
unitary empire, and they responded with distrust,

hostility, or open resistance. As summer turns
to fall, Denin pressed north from Ukraine into

Russia proper. The whites seized Kursk and then
Orrell, key rail cities on the road to Moscow. By

midocctober 1919, white cavalry patrols reached
positions only a few hundred kilometers south of

the capital. They were close enough to believe
[music] in victory. In white headquarters,

officers talked openly about spending Christmas
in Moscow. Some even imagined a victory parade.

But Denin's campaign was already breaking under
its own weight. The white advance stretched across

an enormous front, hundreds of miles wide.
And the further north the spearheads went,

the more fragile the rear became. Denin didn't
just need to win battles. He needed to control

what he conquered. And Ukraine became a black hole
that swallowed his manpower. Behind the front,

chaos exploded. White requisition
squads demanded grain and livestock.

Peasants who hated Bolevik seizures found the
whites just as hungry and often more threatening

because white rhetoric about law and order sounded
like a promise to restore landlords. Resistance

spread across the countryside. And it wasn't just
passive resistance. It was armed, organized, and

ruthless. The most dangerous enemy in Denakin's
rear was Nester McNau, the anarchist guerrilla

leader in southern Ukraine. McNau's black army
didn't fight for the reds or the whites. It fought

for its own revolution and it was violently
anti-white. As Denakin pushed towards Moscow,

Mcno struck behind him. In late September 1919 at
the Battle of Peragonka, McNo's forces hit a white

detachment hard, then surged across white held
territory, cutting rail lines and capturing towns.

White garrisons found themselves attacked by
fighters who could vanish into villages and

forests. Denin was forced to divert thousands of
troops away from the Moscow Drive [music] just to

chase Mcno, an impossible task. It was like trying
to arrest a wildfire. At the same time, Petleura's

forces continued operating as guerrillas after
being forced out of major cities. Ukrainian

partisans harassed white outposts driven by one
goal, an independent Ukraine free of both red and

white rule. And in the far west, Poland's leader
Ysef Pulsudski watched the chaos with calculation.

He feared bullsheism, but he also feared a white
victory that might rebuild a strong Russian empire

hostile to Polish independence. So Poland largely
held back while reds and whites bled each other.

Denin got no rescue from the west. Inside his
own coalition, cracks widened. Kasac units were

often loyal to their home regions first, not to
Denakin's grand march on Moscow. As the campaign

dragged, some formations peeled away to defend
their own villages. And then disease struck.

A brutal typhus epidemic swept through the south
in late 1919, shredding both armies, but hitting

Denakin's overstretched forces especially hard.
The farther the whites advanced, the more men they

lost through sickness, desertion, and exhaustion.
By October 1919, the Bolevixs finally concentrated

for a counterblow. Trosky and the Soviet high
command rushed reinforcements to the southern

front, especially after the danger near Petrorad
eased. Under commanders like Alexander Yagorov

with younger rising leaders such as Male Tokvski
and cavalry commander Semon Bodoni, the Red Army

prepared to strike the overstretched white flanks.
On October 11th, the Reds launched a major counter

offensive near Veronz. Red cavalry smashed
into the Dawn Ksac flank. Budoni's horsemen

cutting through with speed and ferocity. To the
west, red divisions drove toward Oral and Kursk,

hitting Denin from multiple directions.
The whites, who had poured everything into

reaching Moscow, suddenly faced fresh troops
attacking their exposed sides. On October 20,

after bitter fighting, the Red Army retook
Orel. That was the turning point. The White

Advance didn't merely stop. It snapped backward.
What followed was not an orderly retreat, but

a collapse. The Red Army surged south, retaking
city after city. Kursk fell back into red hands by

mid- November. Karov was retaken in December. And
Keev, which Denin had seized months earlier, was

abandoned by the whites. As the front imploded,
red power returned to the city by the end of 1919,

and with it came the machinery of Bolevik control.
Where the Red Army returned, it did not return

alone. Revolutionary committees took over local
government. Czecha units followed the front line,

arresting and executing suspected enemies.
Conscription refilled red ranks overnight.

Grain requisition squads stripped villages to
feed the army and the cities. And railways,

always the true lifelines of this war, were
seized, repaired, and used to move men and orders

with brutal efficiency. In the south, war became
administration. Chaos was replaced by order,

a ruthless order. By January 1920, Denakin's
once massive southern realm had shrunk into a

battered pocket near the Black Sea and the North
Caucasus. His forces were running towards ports,

towards ships, towards exile. And that brings
us to the next stage of the story, the flight

to the sea and the final desperate white gamble in
Crimea. By late 1919, the Civil War stopped being

a contest of generals and became something colder,
a contest of systems. [music] The whites could win

battles. They could take cities. They could even
come terrifyingly close to Moscow and Petrograd.

But the Bolevixs were building a machine that
could absorb defeats, refill its ranks, and keep

moving. In a total war, that machine matters more
than charisma. First, the Reds had the advantage

of the center. They held the densest part of the
old empire, Moscow, Petrorad, and the core railway

hubs that connected everything. Even when the
Red Army retreated, it retreated along interior

lines. That meant shorter supply routes, faster
redeployment, and the ability to concentrate force

at the decisive point. The whites, by contrast,
fought on the outer rim, Siberia, the Baltic,

the South, and every mile they advanced stretched
them thinner. They lived on borrowed railways and

fragile coalitions. Second, the Bolevixs solved
the problem of command. They created a centralized

structure that could issue orders, punish
disobedience, and replace failures. Trosky turned

the Red Army into an instrument. harsh discipline,
political commaars, and a relentless focus on

rail mobility. It was ugly, often brutal, but it
worked. The whites never built an equivalent. They

were a patchwork of armies with different goals.
Monarchists, Republicans, Kasac autonomists,

regional warlords, and foreign backers. Even when
they fought the same enemy, they rarely fought the

same war. Third, the whites lost the countryside.
This is the part that decides civil wars, food,

recruits, and legitimacy. The Bolevixs were
hated in many villages for requisitions and

war communism. [music] Yes, but the whites carried
a deeper problem. Their political message sounded

like a return to the old world. Russia, one and
indivisible, lawful property, order. To a peasant

who had seized land in 1917, that translated into
one fear. The landlord is coming back. Denakin's

requisition squads. Colchack's mobilization,
Vangle's desperate foraging, different uniforms,

same hunger at the village gate. So peasant
loyalty turned into [music] peasant war. Here

is what that looked like on the ground. One
short story multiplied across a continent. A

peasant family in a Ukrainian village. We can call
them Ivon's family because there were a thousand

Ivons. In 1918, a red detachment arrives and takes
grain for the revolution. The father curses them,

but he survives. In 1919, white patrols
arrive and take [music] grain for Russia,

and the officer talks about restoring lawful
order. The mother hears only one word,

landlords. Then a nationalist band passes through
and demands food for Ukraine. The family's hidden

stash shrinks to nothing. Ivonne's older brother
is pressed into service, first by the whites,

then captured, then shoved into a red unit under
threat of execution. Ivonne's father hides a rifle

in the barn, not to fight for any flag, but to
keep strangers from taking the last cow. When

the reds return, they accuse the family of helping
Denakin. When the whites return, they accuse them

of helping the reds. Between those accusations,
the village learns the core lesson of the civil

war. If you can't offer security and land, you
can't win the village. Fourth, the whites were

politically blind. They treated nationalism as
a nuisance instead of a reality. In Ukraine,

the Baltic, the Cauasus, and Central Asia, many
people did not want Russia restored, red or white.

They wanted autonomy, land, or independence.
The Bolsheviks, despite often crushing those

aspirations, were sometimes willing to speak the
language of self-determination when it helped

them. They could sign treaties, make promises,
co-opt elites, and later centralize power again.

The whites largely refused. Denikin dismissed
Ukrainian autonomy. Kolch rejected compromise

that turned potential allies into enemies and
turned rear areas into battlefields. Fifth,

terror and discipline cut both ways. The Reds used
terror openly, the [music] Czecha, executions,

hostage taking, but they used it inside a coherent
system with a single purpose. Keep the state

alive. feed the cities, keep the trains running,
keep the army moving. White terror was often more

chaotic. Local commanders, revenge killings,
pograms in some occupied areas, [music] and

corruption that rotted legitimacy from the inside.
Every atrocity became a recruitment poster for the

Reds. And then there is the question everyone
asks. What about the foreign powers? The Allies

did intervene. They sent weapons. They landed
troops in ports. They backed white governments.

But their intervention was never a single
united crusade. After World War I, Western

publics were exhausted. Governments were divided
on goals, contain bulsheism, protect stockpiles,

secure debts, stop Germany's influence, or
simply get their soldiers home. And the whites

looked like a bad bet. divided, unpopular, and
incapable of building a stable state. So support

shrank. By 1919 1920, help increasingly meant
evacuation, [music] not victory. One more factor

message. The Bolevixs offered a simple story.
Brutal, often dishonest, but simple. We are the

worker state. [music] The whites are landlords and
generals who will bring the old chains back. Even

people who hated bolevik rule could understand
a choice in a single sentence. The whites never

found an equally clear promise. Many of their
leaders postpone decisions. We will restore

order first and later a constituent assembly will
decide. In a famine country, later sounds like

never. They could not offer land, could not offer
autonomy, and could not offer a believable future.

Put it together and the pattern becomes clear.
The whites fought like a coalition of fronts.

The bolevixs fought like a state under permanent
mobilization. The reds could seize territory. The

Bolsheviks could hold it, administer it, and
turn it into new battalions. In 1919, the Reds

were cornered. In 1920, they were a war machine.
And that is why the last white chapters, Nvorius,

Crimea, the final exodus feel so final. Not
because the whites suddenly forgot how to fight,

but because by then the rules had changed.
This was no longer a duel. It was total war,

and the Bolevixs were the only side that built
an engine powerful enough to survive it. By early

1920, the White cause in European Russia was on
life support. Driven out of central Russia, the

last white armies and the civilians who followed
them were fleeing south in disarray. In Siberia,

the other great white pillar had already collapsed
with Admiral Kolch's capture and death. Now,

the civil war's final act would unfold along
the Black Sea and in Crimea, ending not with a

triumph, but with an evacuation. A tragic exodus
for those who could escape and abandonment for

those who could not. Let us return to the scene
at Novarosisk, the Black Sea port we saw in the

introduction. It is late March 1920. Denin's
remaining forces, perhaps 40,000 soldiers plus

tens of thousands of refugees, have crammed into
this city, one of the last white-held ports on the

mainland. The Red Army is only a day or two behind
them, advancing fast through the Kuban. Denin has

accepted a brutal truth. He cannot hold the coast
or the foothills of the Caucases. The only option

is evacuation by sea, either to Crimea or wherever
a ship can reach. But there are not enough ships.

A few British vessels sit in the harbor along
with Allied and white ships, yet nowhere near

enough to carry the mass of humanity pouring
toward the docks. The scene is pure desperation.

Columns of soldiers still clutching rifles and
banners collide with civilians dragging carts,

dragging suitcases, dragging children by the
hand. Every vessel that can float is pressed

into service. Destroyers, rust streaked steamers,
fishing boats, anything that can take a body,

and still chaos reigns. There is no single
authority [music] controlling the loading.

When a gang plank drops, a crushing wave surges
forward. Men scramble. Women scream. Fights break

out in the panic. White officers, revolver in
hand, try to force order or clear a path for

troops, but civilians slip through, begging
for a corner on a deck, a lifeboat, a ladder,

anything. Meanwhile, the thunder of artillery
grows louder by the hour. The reds are closing on

the outskirts. Denin, holloweyed and heartsick,
tries to impose priorities. Combat units must

board first to preserve the core of an army that
might still fight in Crimea. Horses are abandoned,

fodder is gone, and loading animals is impossible.
Some officers shoot their mounts rather than

leave them for the enemy. Heavy equipment that
cannot be evacuated is destroyed. On the docks,

a handful of British Mark 5 tanks, the same steel
beasts delivered the year before, sit dead, out

of fuel. Rather than gift them to the Bolevixs,
white engineers disable [music] them and set them

ablaze. Warehouses of ammunition and supplies are
torched as well. Thick black smoke rolls over the

harbor, mixing with salt air and coal fumes from
ship funnels. Not everyone can be saved. The crowd

is simply too large for the ships available.
As decks fill, captains raise anchor and cast

off because if they hesitate, the desperate mass
on the pier will swamp the vessel. When a boat

begins to pull away, a whale rises from those left
behind. People leap into the freezing march sea,

trying to swim for the departing ships. Some
cling to floating debris. Some try to grab hulls.

Many slip under. Along the key, a group of
officers stands in silence. They have decided

not to flee. Some feel honorbound to remain.
Others cannot bear exile. Revolvers appear,

final salutes, then shots, bodies collapsing among
discarded luggage. Others walk to the water's edge

with stones in their pockets and step into the
dark waves, choosing drowning over captivity.

Around them hangs a choking fog of dread and
guilt. Guilt among those escaping as they look

back at the masses still trapped on shore. Dread
among those who know they will not get out. By the

night of March 26th, 1920, the last ship that can
safely depart leaves Novarosis. Denikin is on one

of the final vessels, staying to the end to direct
the rear guard. Over 30,000 are evacuated by sea,

but many more are left behind. When the Red Army
storms into Novorosis on March 27th, tens of

thousands of stragglers, sick, wounded, civilian,
are captured. In accordance with hard bolevik

policy, known Kasac [music] fighters and white
officers are often executed shortly after capture.

Czecha units and vengeful red partisans accompany
the regular troops and cleansing, as they call it,

begins. Novorosis breaks Denikin. [music]
The evacuation saved a fraction of his army,

but it was so chaotic and humiliating that blame
followed immediately. Whites accused the British

of doing too little. The British accused the
whites of organizing nothing. Regardless,

Denin's credibility is shattered. In April 1920,
once safely in Crimea, he resigns his command.

The white leadership turns to Baron Pota Wrangle.
Wrangle is tall, austere, a cavalry general known

for his black cosac uniform and an unblinking
severe gaze. He inherits a nearly impossible

position. Yet, he tries to turn Crimea into
a last fortress. The Crimean Peninsula is a

natural stronghold surrounded by the Black Sea,
connected to the mainland by narrow choke points,

especially the Pericob ismas. Wrangle fortifies
these approaches, reorganizes what remains of the

army, and tries something earlier white leaders
largely ignored, reforms meant to win popular

support. In the territory he controls, mainly
Crimea and parts of neighboring Tavria, Wrangler

announces land reforms, promising peasants legal
title to the land they farm with compensation to

former owners deferred to a future government.
It is a shocking break from old white orthodoxy,

and it angers hardline monarchists and landlords
around him. But Wrangle is pragmatic. Without the

peasants, he has no base. Without a base, he
has no army. Without an army, Crimea is only

a waiting room for defeat. For a brief moment in
1920, events elsewhere offer Wrangler a thin hope.

The Boleviks become entangled in a full-scale
war with newly independent Poland. In the summer,

Soviet forces rush toward Warsaw and are
beaten back in August at the Battle of Warsaw,

the Miracle on the Vistula. During those months,
Moscow must divert troops and attention to the

Polish front. Wrangle seizes the opening. In June
1920, he launches an offensive out of Crimea into

southern Ukraine, not to conquer the entire
country, but to gather supplies and to shake

loose the red grip on the step. His forces push
north into the Tavria region, briefly capturing

key towns and rail lines, trying to collect grain,
horses, and breathing space. For a short time,

the White Island seems to expand like a thorn
in the Bolevik side. Wrangle even flirts with

tactical cooperation with anti-Bolleshevik
insurgents, including Mocknose forces. But these

arrangements are marriages of convenience,
not true alliances, and they do not last.

Once the Bolsheviks secure an armistice with
Poland, they turn south with full force. Under

Miky Frunza, the Red Army concentrate overwhelming
strength to finish Wrangler. Deals are made and

betrayed. Insurgents are used and crushed.
With their rear secured, [music] the Reds

throw everything at Crimea. The final setpiece
battle of the civil war begins in November 1920.

The assault on Pericop. The ismas is only a few
miles wide, defended by trenches, barbed wire,

and fortifications anchored on the old fortress
of Orcopy. A shallow, treacherous salt lagoon,

the Civash, the rotten sea flanks the position.
In a bold maneuver, red troops cross the seash at

night during low tide and outflank the white lines
while other forces storm Pedakup head on. After

bitter fighting and desperate counterattacks,
the Red Army breaks through into Crimea. Wrangle

understands immediately the door has closed.
There will be no holding the peninsula. He

orders evacuation. this time more organized than
Novarasis because he has weeks to plan and the

Crimean ports are larger. From Civastapole, Yolta,
Kerch, Theodosia, and others, an armada of ships,

Russian, French, British, Italian, anything
that can move begins taking passengers. In

early November, soldiers board in units, keeping
discipline. Civilians crowd the docks. refugees

who fled after Novarasis. Crimean anti-communists.
Families who sense what will happen when the

Reds arrive. The scenes are still heartbreaking.
People clinging to one another. Families deciding

who goes and who stays, but the evacuation is
executed under military order. By November 13th,

1920, Wrangle issues his final orders. Destroy
what cannot be carried. board the last ships.

The final vessels weigh anchor and sail as
red cavalry gallops toward the outskirts.

The Bolevixs are too late to stop the exodus,
but not too late to take revenge on those left

behind. Around 150,000 people are evacuated from
Crimea. Roughly 80 to 90,000 soldiers and officers

and tens of thousands of civilians. It is one of
the largest sea evacuations of its era. A silent

procession of ships crossing the Black Sea toward
Istanbul. On deck, there is little celebration,

only exhaustion, sobbing, and the hollow shock
of exile. As the Crimean coastline recedes,

many understand they may never see Russia again.
With Crimea lost, organized white resistance in

European Russia effectively ended in November
1920. Frankle's evacuation removed the last major

white field army from the main theater. After
that, the fighting that still continued was no

longer a single nationwide front, but scattered
holdouts on the empire's edges. Most notably in

the Russian Far East around Vladivosto and along
the Transbicol Amur region, where antibolchevic

forces and local regimes lingered until 1922.
But in the heart of the former empire, Moscow,

Petrorad, the Vulga, Ukraine, and the Black Sea
coast, the decisive struggle was over. The whites

had dreamed of restoring a united Russia. Perhaps
a republic, perhaps a constitutional monarchy,

but not a bolevik state. That old Russia has
ceased to exist. In its place stands Soviet

Russia. Soon to gather the shattered pieces of
empire into a new union. The old ruling classes,

nobility, sarist officers, bourgeoa elites are
dead, scattered or powerless. Millions go into

exile, forming a diaspora from Paris to Shanghai.
The white Emigra. For those who fled, it is the

end of their Russia. For those who stayed, a new
and uncertain chapter under Bolevik rule begins.

And beyond this finale lies another battlefield.
One the civil war narrative often reduces to a

footnote despite its scale and brutality. Ukraine.
Reds, whites, nationalists, anarchists, foreign

powers. Multiple wars inside the war. In the next
film, we will go there and unfold that hidden

front step by step from 1917 through the final
incorporation of Ukraine into the Soviet state.

By the end of 1920, the organized white armies
in European Russia were gone. Denkin's crusade

had collapsed into flight. Udinich's ghost army
dissolved at the border. Wrangle's last fortress

in Crimea emptied into the sea. On paper, the
Bolsheviks had won. But victory did not look like

triumph. It looked like ash. The civil war left
the former empire gutted. Cities half starved,

railways shattered, villages burned, families
scattered. Millions were dead from battle,

terror, disease, and hunger. And the violence
did not neatly end when the fronts fell silent.

In the countryside, the same pressures that fed
the war, requisitions, conscription, revenge,

continued to grind. Rebellions flared and the
state answered with force. The revolution survived

by turning itself into a permanent emergency.
And that's the final irony of 1919, 1920. The

Bolevixs did not win because they were kinder or
because the country loved them. They won because

they built the only system ruthless and organized
enough to keep fighting when everyone else fell

apart. They mastered railways, mobilization,
discipline, and they turned every recaptured

town into new battalions, new grain quotas,
new orders telegraphed from Moscow. In 1921,

exhausted and terrified of collapse, the Bolevixs
would even retreat from their own policies,

introducing the new economic policy, loosening
the grip of war communism to keep the country from

breaking. And in 1922, the surviving fragments of
the old empire would be welded into a new state,

the USSR. For the victors, there would be parades
and speeches. For the defeated, there would be

suitcases, ship decks, and a lifetime of remember
when. The white immigrants, officers, doctors,

writers, engineers, entire families scattered from
Constantinople to Paris, from Bgrade to Shanghai.

They carried a version of Russia that no longer
existed. And they would spend decades arguing

about where the country went wrong and whether
their defeat was fate or failure. For those who

stayed, the new order arrived in stamped papers
and midnight knocks, committees, informants,

quotas, conscription lists. The war had taught the
state how to control life. Who eats? Who works?

Who travels? Who speaks? The guns quieted,
but the machinery stayed. So when we say the

Civil War ends, what we really mean is this. The
battlefield changed shape. The front lines faded

and the struggle moved into villages, factories,
and families. And nowhere was that transformation

more violent than Ukraine. Picture a single
village in the step. One month a red detachment

demands grain, the next month a white cavalry
patrol demands horses. Then McKno's ravers appear

like shadows. And by dawn, another flag is up over
the council building. People stop asking who will

win and start asking who will be here tomorrow.
That is the film we make next. That's the next

episode. If you want to follow the series, make
sure you're subscribed. If you missed part one,

click the link on screen or in the description
to catch up from the beginning. And if you

want to support documentaries like this, these
long sourced films that take months to build,

check out the channel membership. Super thanks or
the links in the description. Because the Civil

War did not just decide who ruled Russia, it
decided what Russia and the world would become.