It was a hopeless fight. The landowning class of Imperial Russia trying to change the fate that awaited them from the much more numerous Red Army. Could they use the old aristocratic military tradition and playing to religion to win over the people and turn the tide? So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.
White Russia, renamed in retrospect South Russia, wasn’t a real country. So todays stamp was more to raise revenue and publicity for the military and political movement. The nature of the stamps, poor printing on poor paper but at the same time oversized show them not for postage but more like mini propaganda posters.
Denikin, named after the White movement’s general, are common and of little value. The exception being one of these stamps with a cancelation from actual postal use. The White movement half occupied a decent amount of territory including many post offices that mostly were not functioning but occasionally…
After the October 1917 Bolshevik revolution several former Czarist military formed a new volunteer White army to take on the new Red Army. The old Czarist army was mostly in tatters after being defeated by Germany in World War I. The Red Army, though larger, was not in good shape either. General Anton Denikin lead his forces and occupied much of Ukraine. the Caucus mountains and along the Volga river. The group appealed based on Russian patriotism and Russian Orthodox Christian identity. The Bolsheviks were described as Jewish. In theory, a division along these lines was adventitious to the White movement, as Russia was only about 5 percent Jewish. The Bolsheviks on the other hand, while promoting atheism, had leaders that were 88 percent of Jewish background including the leader known as Trotsky who was Commandant of the Red Army.
Despite receiving support from the West and from the wealthy landowning class, their forces of mostly Cossacks was not successful. The Red Army defeated the White Army at Orel 300 miles south of Moscow in October 1919. General Denikin resigned and went into exile and was replaced by General Pyotr Wrangel who the Reds made famous as the Black Barron. The force was gradually pushed back to the Crimea from which many went into exile including the Black Baron. Those that chose to remain suffered through decossackifacation with many killed. The Black Barron himself was poisoned by his butler’s brother who was a Soviet agent while living in Belgium and working as a mining engineer. Denikin lived out his live writing memoirs in Paris and later in New York City. He lobbied against the provisions of the Yalta treaty that called for the forced repatriation of Russians in the western zone after World War II that included anti Soviet Cossacks and White Russians who were promptly executed as Denikin had warned. His daughter many years later made contact with Putin and Denikin has been rehabilitated and his remains returned to Russia and buried with honor. Among his writings from exile were discussions on the proper relations between Russia and Ukraine who he described as Great Russia and Little Russia. His work was extensively quoted by Putin during the Russian troubles with Ukraine recently. His injection of religious identity politics during the civil war in Russia means that he was considered an enemy by Israelis.
Well I am left with an empty drink glass and a fake stamp. Come again for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting. First published in 2019.