Евгений Водолазкин - Solovyov and Larionov

The general knew what he was talking about. He had needed to hold the line in Crimea twice in 1920, in January and November. The events of October and November ended up being the final collapse of the White Movement. He was unable to hold on to Crimea.

Even so, the first defense (which nobody considered possible at the time) in January ended up being successful. It was this defense that held off the Reds’ capture of the peninsula for nearly a year. Researchers assess the situation that took shape toward the beginning of 1920 more or less identically. The decline of the White Movement was becoming more obvious at this time.

‘After all, we’re not going to the fair, we’re coming back from the fair,’ is what General Larionov whispered in his horse’s ear one sunny January morning.

For everyone observing that scene, the general’s words took the form of a small cloud of steam. In the absence of witnesses, it remains a mystery how that phrase could have reached the public domain. There is no denying the multiple references in the historical literature to the trusting, nearly human relationship between the horse and General Larionov, who called the animal my friend and addressed lines specifically to the horse. And yet it would be ridiculous to imagine that the horse could respond to the general in kind, even more so that the horse was chatting right and left about what had been whispered in her ear.

The general, however, addressed the exact same words to a British envoy in November of that same year. The text arrived by telegraph because the general himself was securing his army’s evacuation from Crimea and heading up the last line of defense. Needless to say, in the telegram to the British envoy (it has been preserved) there is not a word about the phrase not being addressed to him alone. Be that as it may, in scholarship—as, for example, in Vitaly Romanchuk’s In Decline —the text in question is quoted with a reference to January. What is more, it is quoted fairly frequently in scholarship, yielding in popularity only to the well-known explanation of the reasons for the Whites’ defeat. This explanation, which the general formulated with disheartening directness, is in the introduction to the reminiscences that Dupont discovered. It reads, ‘A clod of dung, of medium size, began rolling through Russia. It grew with incredible speed due to the adherence of similar material, of which, alas, there turned out to be very much in Russia. We were crushed by that clod.’

And so the situation that had taken shape by January 1920 was anything but simple. The lethal clod depicted so elegantly by the general was rolling through Northern Taurida, which was the threshold to Crimea, and no one envisioned a force capable of impeding it. In fact, the supreme command of the White Army did not intend to defend Crimea. The Whites’ primary forces were retreating and there were battles in those two directions, the Caucasus and Odessa, from where a counterattack was subsequently planned, after respite and regrouping of forces. If events developed favorably, they intended to force the Reds from Crimea with the return of troops that were encircling the peninsula in two streams rushing north. But that was a matter for the future. In January 1920, Crimea was tacitly destined for surrender. The limited forces sent to defend it shattered everyone’s last doubts about that. Everyone’s but General Larionov’s.

As we know, Dupont’s article, ‘Leonidas and His Children’, presents a rigorous enumeration of troops at the general’s disposal during the defense of Crimea. So as not to force the reader to chase down this work, which is generally difficult to find, we will reiterate, in brief, the data cited in the article:

The troops enumerated had twenty-four light and eight horse-drawn weapons at their disposal. In the course of organizing the defense, General Larionov also succeeded in procuring six tanks (three heavy and three light) as well as eight armored trains. Despite all the armored trains turning out to be defective, they became a big source of moral support for the son of the railroad department’s director.

For anyone with even the slightest knowledge of military matters, the above enumeration leaves no doubt: the White Army had decided, at the highest level of command, to relinquish Crimea. Only 3,500 fighters were sent to protect the front, which stretched for 400 versts. The general was aware that it was impossible to defend Crimea in Northern Taurida. And so he did not even begin to do so.

Without a doubt, General Larionov was inspired by a brilliant idea from Spartan king Leonidas, who decided to fend off the Persians in a narrow gorge. As we know, Leonidas’s military contingent was extremely limited (a tenth of what General Larionov had at his disposal, not to mention the complete absence of armored trains), but that did not prevent him from fighting in the worthiest manner. This battle was analyzed in depth during tactical lessons at the Second Cadet Corps, where the future general studied back in the day. King Leonidas’s feat made an indelible impression on cadet Larionov.

As life would have it, the general took part in battles that unfolded on emphatically open terrain. These were flood plains, boundless rye fields, or steppes that were parched until they cracked. During World War One, Larionov happened to fight in the mountains for a time, but those mountains turned out to be the Carpathians, which by 1914 had become thoroughly weathered and were not at all suitable with respect to defense. General Larionov mentally thanked fate that it was not the Persians opposing him in these tactically unsuitable circumstances. Only in January 1920 did he sense that his hour had come. Like the renowned Spartan, the Russian general was visited by the abrupt realization that the only chance for a successful defense was to narrow the front. He decided against defending Northern Taurida and moved his troops toward Perekop.

The Perekop Isthmus was probably the most joyless place in Russia’s south. It was difficult to breathe there in the summer heat because of fumes from the dead waters of the Sivash, lagoons often referred to as the Putrid Sea. A wind would come up from time to time, rolling dried-out seaweed along salt-splotched soil but bringing no feeling of freshness. The wind became an utter disaster in the winter. It drove stinging drifting snow over an uninhabited icy expanse where there were not even any shrubs to stop it. The wind carried away all hope of warming up. It crept behind the lapels of army overcoats and froze fingers to gun barrels, extinguished campfires made from cart debris and strewed Perekop’s lunar landscape with ash. It is not surprising that territory of this sort made a most unfavorable impression on General Larionov. And so he decided not to defend it.

After familiarizing himself with the history of the defense of Northern Crimea, the military commander noticed that a common mistake of defenders each time was their absolute determination to stand firm on the Perekop rampart. Meanwhile, in light of the climatic conditions already described, simply being on the Perekop Isthmus sapped a huge amount of strength, resources, and morale because there is nothing more ruinous for an army than sitting in trenches in the bitter cold. The road to Crimea was opened after defenders were thrown from the Perekop ramparts. The resourceful general acted differently so as not to repeat his predecessors’ mistakes. He decided to grant his adversary this expanse drifted with snow and deprived of any form of habitation. They did not wait for the Reds on the Perekop Peninsula; only a small outpost was left there and its role boiled down to informing the main forces of an attack. They waited for the Reds at the exit from the isthmus.