White movement

The White movement, also known as the Whites, was one of the main factions of the Russian Civil War of 1917–1922. It was led mainly by the right-wing and conservative officers of the Russian Empire, while the Bolsheviks who led the October Revolution in Russia, also known as the Reds, and their supporters, were regarded as the main enemies of the Whites. It operated as a system of governments and administrations united as the Russian State, which functioned as a military dictatorship throughout most of its existence, and military formations collectively referred to as the White Army, or the White Guard. Although the White movement included a variety of political opinions in Russia opposed to the Bolsheviks, from the republican-minded liberals through monarchists to the ultra-nationalist Black Hundreds, and lacked a universally-accepted doctrine, the main force behind the movement were the conservative officers. The resulting movement shared many traits with widespread right-wing counter-revolutionary movements of the time, namely nationalism, racism, distrust of liberal and democratic politics, clericalism, contempt for the common man and dislike of industrial civilization. In November 1918, the movement united on an authoritarian-right platform around the figure of Alexander Kolchak as its principal leader. It generally defended the order of pre-revolutionary Imperial Russia, although the ideal of the movement was a mythical "Holy Russia", what was a mark of its religious understanding of the world. The positive program of the movement was largely summarized in the slogan of "united and indivisible Russia" which meant the restoration of imperial state borders, and its denial of the right to self-determination. The Whites are associated with pogroms and antisemitism; while the relations with the Jews featured a certain complexity, the movement was largely antisemitic, with the White generals viewing the Revolution as a result of a Jewish conspiracy. Antisemitism and...