White movement
The White movement (Russian: pre–1918 Бѣлое движеніе / post–1918 Белое движение, tr. Beloye dvizheniye, IPA: [ˈbʲɛləɪ dvʲɪˈʐenʲɪɪ]),[a] also known as the Whites (Бѣлые / Белые, Beliye), was a loose confederation of anti-communist forces that fought the communist Bolsheviks, also known as the Reds, in the Russian Civil War (1917–1923) and that to a lesser extent continued operating as militarized associations of rebels both outside and within Russian borders in Siberia until roughly World War II (1939–1945). The movement's military arm was the White Army (Бѣлая армія / Белая армия, Belaya armiya), also known as the White Guard (Бѣлая гвардія / Белая гвардия, Belaya gvardiya) or White Guardsmen (Бѣлогвардейцы / Белогвардейцы, Belogvardeytsi).
Not to be confused with White Power Movement, White Russia, Belarus, or Nuer White Army.
White movement
Бѣлое движенiе
Белое движение
Volunteer Army/AFSR:
Lavr Kornilov (1917–1918)
Anton Denikin (1918–1920)
Pyotr Wrangel (1920)
In Transbaikal:
Grigory Semyonov (1917–1921)
PA-RG:
Alexander Kolchak (1918–1920)
North-West Army:
Nikolai Yudenich (1919–1920)
Also:
Mikhail Diterikhs (1922)
Anatoly Pepelyayev (1923)
1917–1923
3,400,000 (peak)
Allied interventionist states:
United Kingdom
United States
Japan
China[1]
France
Czechoslovakia
Canada
Poland
Greece
Italy
Romania
Serbia
Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes
Other states and factions:
Don cossacks
Kuban cossacks
Estonia
Latvia
Armenia
Mongolia
Landeswehr
Right SRs
Ukrainian State
Finnish Whites
Alash-Orda
During the Russian Civil War, the White movement functioned as a big-tent political movement representing an array of political opinions in Russia united in their opposition to the Bolsheviks—from the republican-minded liberals and Kerenskyite social democrats on the left through monarchists and supporters of a united multinational Russia to the ultra-nationalist Black Hundreds on the right.
Following the military defeat of the Whites, remnants and continuations of the movement remained in several organizations, some of which only had narrow support, enduring within the wider White émigré overseas community until after the fall of the European communist states in the Eastern European Revolutions of 1989 and the subsequent dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1990–1991. This community-in-exile of anti-communists often divided into liberal and the more conservative segments, with some still hoping for the restoration of the Romanov dynasty.