Evacuation of the Crimea - Misplaced Pages

November 1920 evacuation of the Russian Army

Evacuation of Crimea
Part of the Southern Front of the Russian Civil War
Evacuation of Pyotr Wrangel's Russian Army from Crimea
Type	Emergency evacuation
Location	Crimea, South Russia
Planned by	Russian Army
Commanded by	Pyotr Wrangel
Objective	Evacuation of Russian soldiers and civilians to Constantinople
Date	November 13–16, 1920 (1920-11-13 – 1920-11-16)
Executed by	Russian Squadron
Outcome	Evacuation successful Crimea occupied by the Red Army Mass reprisals against civilian population, knowns as the Red Terror Establishment of the Crimean ASSR as part of the Russian SFSR

v t e Southern Front of the Russian Civil War
1917 1st Kharkiv 1918 Mughan Shamkhor Donbas-Don 1st Kiev Ice March Steppe March Iași–Don March Days 1st Crimea Transcaucasia Kuban Goychay Sochi Tsaritsyn Kurdamir Livny Baku Dibrivka Allied intervention 1919 Voronezh–Povorino Katerynoslav March Northern Caucasus Ukraine 2nd Kiev Khotyn Uprising 1st Donbas Hryhoriv Uprising Binagadi Chapan rebellion Vyoshenskaya Uprising Alexandrovsky Fort Bender Uprising Odesa 2nd Kharkiv Mamontov Raid Southern Front counteroffensive 3rd Kiev Perehonivka Advance on Moscow Nizhyn–Poltava Orel–Kursk Voronezh–Kastornoye Khopyor–Don Pavlohrad–Katerynoslav 3rd Kharkiv 4th Kiev 2nd Donbas 1920 Rostov–Novocherkassk Odesa North Caucasus Novorossiysk Azerbaijan Yalama Sarvan Ganja Ochakov Anzali Lankaran Ulagay's Landing Obytichnyi Spit Armenia Northern Taurida Dagestan uprising Tambov Rebellion Perekop–Chonhar 2nd Crimea Bolshevik–Makhnovist conflict 1921 Anapa February Georgia Mountainous Armenia

Southern Front
of the Russian Civil War

1917

1st Kharkiv

1918

1919

1920

1921

The Evacuation of the Crimea (November 13–16, 1920) was an event in the Russian Civil War, in which the Government of South Russia evacuated over sea from the Crimean Peninsula, the last stronghold of the White movement on the Southern Front, bringing an end to the fighting on that Front.

The Evacuation

During the occupation of Crimea by the Crimean Soviet Army under the command of Pavel Dybenko in April 1919, the Entente troops were evacuated from Sevastopol, taking with them a number of refugees, including some of the leaders of the Second Crimean regional government of Solomon Crimea. White Army units retreated to the Kerch Peninsula and held it. Initially, the Crimean Socialist Soviet Republic and its leaders Dmitry Ulyanov pursued a relatively soft policy in comparison with the atrocities of the winter of 1917-1918 and were able to avoid mass terror.

However, by the end of October 1920, the White Army had been driven out of Southern Russia and Ukraine, and only held the Crimean Peninsula, defended behind the narrow Perekop Isthmus. When this last defensive line was breached by the Red Army during the Siege of Perekop, the commander of the White Army, Pyotr Wrangel, decided to evacuate. The operation had been preliminarily worked out and planned by General Wrangel's staff, so its implementation was carried out in good order.

During the evacuation from the ports of the Crimean peninsula (Sevastopol, Yevpatoria, Kerch, Feodosia, Yalta) a total of 145,693 soldiers and civilians, not counting the crews, were taken on board on 126 ships and "sudenosheks" (small boats and tugs).

This fleet, known as Wrangel's fleet and composed of ships of the Whites' Black Sea fleet, foreign ships, and the temporarily mobilized ships of the Voluntary Fleet, first sailed to Entente-occupied Constantinople. A significant number of the passengers left the ships here, replenishing the ranks of White Russian emigres. Between December 8, 1920, and February 1921, the reduced flotilla sailed to the Tunisian port of Bizerte.

The soldiers and civilians who were left behind in the Crimea suffered under the Red Terror organised by Béla Kun and Rosalia Zemlyachka, under the general management of the representative of the Russian Soviet government, Yuri Pyatakov, and authorised by Vladimir Lenin.

The estimated number of executions vary from minimum 12,000 over 50,000 to 120,000. The White Army soldiers had been falsely promised amnesty if they surrendered.

Several rare photographs of the moment of evacuation in Sevastopol and Yalta have been preserved. The Crimean Evacuation is also shown in Soviet feature films "Two Comrades Were Serving" (1968) and "The Flight" (1970), and also in the 2014 film "Sunstroke" .

Photographs

Scenes of evacuation in the ports

Evacuation line of civilians in Crimea
Final departure of Russian troops from Crimea
Evacuation of Pyotr Wrangel from Sevastopol
Troops of the 1st Army Corps evacuating on the Saratov transport ship
Last patrol of Crimea by Russian Army troops
The Evacuation of Wrangel's White Army from Crimea in November 1920

Out to sea

Russian fleet heading out to sea
Russian fleet in the open sea
Russian fleet in the Bosporus
Russian Army on a ship leaving Crimea

References

Ushakov, A.I. "Крымская эвакуация. 1920 год". Slovo.ru (in Russian). Retrieved 8 July 2022.
Collective of authors. Revolution and Civil War in Russia: 1917-1923. Encyclopedia in 4 volumes -. 2008.
Rayfield, Donald (2004). Stalin and His Hangmen: The Tyrant and Those Who Killed for Him. Random House. p. 83.
Gellately, Robert (2008). Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe. p. 72.

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