Orders
of Battle
All orders of battle merely give a
snapshot of the army at one point in time: and the Russian Civil War
even more so than
most wars. What lists we have tend to be associated with a
reorganisation, so are much better
evidence for the months following than for the months preceding
them.
The orbats I
have chosen are
largely those where there are numbers attached, which allows gamers to
gauge some idea
of the relative balance of infantry :
cavalry :
MGs : guns.
NB: different armies counted differently. The Whites
tended to count just riflemen as "bayonets" and just line cavalry as
"sabres", not including any supporting troops like machine-gunners. The
Reds tended to count everyone in a rifle unit as a "bayonet". The Reds
also tended to have more non-combatants in a front-line unit than their
opponents. It is therefore inappropriate to just compare the bald
figures directly.
Whites in South Russia
The AFSR was divided into some major groupings. Here are those
front-line portions to the east (that is excluding the Ukraine, where
the Volunteer Army portion was) at the time of the rejig in Autumn
1919. The AFSR was pretty much at its peak at this time:
During1920 the AFSR became the "Russian Army" under the leadership of
Baron
Wrangel. There were a great many rearrangements, both big and small,
and units in the orders of battle might have no equipment or be made up
more or less entirely of POWs. Orbats for this period must
therefore be used with great caution, as they were out of date even as
they were being made.
Anti-Bolshevik forces
on the Estonian/Petrograd Front
This is the White Russian units operating on the Estonian border up to
May 1919.
(Maps showing the Northern Corps' position in May and the extent of
their offensive can be found in the
maps
section.)
By late 1919 the Whites in this area were called the
North-Western
Army, and under the command of General Iudenich. Although not
actually doing much fighting, their reluctant Estonian allies propped
up the southern wing. This is the list of units pretty much at the peak
of the second drive on Petrograd.
Anti-Bolshevik forces
in Siberia
The short-lived
KOMUCH was never a great
power but its campaigning in
co-ordination with the Czech Legion was the first serious threat to
Soviet power. Information about the People's Army is hard to find,
hated as it was by adherents of the extremist elements that came to
dominate the early writing up of the war, both Red and White.
The Urals Host was formally part of the main White forces in Siberia,
but operationally it kept separate. The Ataman commanded non-Cossack
forces and parts of other Hosts, and various orders of battle deal with
those in different ways. The Urals Host appears to have had both
territorial and numerical naming systems, which makes tracing units
difficult:
The Orenburg Host is very difficult to keep track of. Ataman Dutov
commanded large numbers of non-Cossack forces, but at the same time
many Orenburg Cossack regiments were dispersed to other commands. These
orders of battle do not list all the Orenburg units, just those in the
main Orenburg theatre.
Red Army
A bit of a resource for tracking down Soviet Cavalry divisions:
especially useful for when they changed names.
An orbat for those elements of the Soviet Southern Front at the crucial
turning point of Denikin's drive on Moscow. Known as the Battle of Orel
or, in Soviet literature, as the Orel-Kromy Operation:
An orbat for those units facing the Whites listed in the
Crimea above:
NDA Belorussian
Campaign 1920
An orbat for the brief attack near Mozyr' by the Russian Peoples'
Volunteer Army under the command of Bulak-Balakhovich:
Polish-Soviet War 1920
I have assembled an orbat for the Poles in August 1920 at the Battle of
Warsaw, which includes the numbers for most divisions taken from
Sikorski:
For the Battle of Komarów (also known as Cześniki) see my
article in the history section:
Ukrainian Nationalists
There is an orbat for the Galician Ukrainians:
Freikorps in the Baltic
Various orbats can be found in my section on that war:
