Evacuation of the Crimea (1920)
크림 철수 (1920)
The evacuation of 13 to 16 November 1920 in which Wrangel's Russian Army and civilians who sided with it sailed for Constantinople from Sevastopol, Yalta, Feodosia, Kerch and other Crimean ports after the Red Army broke through at Perekop. Some 146,000 people, not counting crews, were carried on 126 vessels. Unlike Novorossiysk it went off in relatively good order under a plan drawn up in advance, but it was a departure abroad, with no territory left to the Whites in European Russia. Many of the officers, soldiers and civilians who stayed behind fell victim to the Red Terror in Crimea that followed.
In depth
On 11 November Frunze, commander of the Southern Front, offered Wrangel by radio an amnesty for all who laid down their arms if he ceased resistance. Lenin at once wired that he was "extremely surprised at the inordinate leniency of the terms", that the fleet must be secured and not a single ship let out, and that if the enemy refused, the terms should not be repeated and "we must deal with them mercilessly". On the same day Wrangel ordered the evacuation of all who had shared the army's road, the families of soldiers and officials, and anyone who would be in danger when the enemy came, while the Government of South Russia issued a notice advising those not in danger to stay in Crimea. The army split in two, the 1st and 2nd Corps and Barbovich's cavalry corps heading for Sevastopol and Yalta and the 3rd Corps and the Don and Kuban corps for Kerch and Feodosia. Ships began leaving Sevastopol on the 14th, the Red Army entering the city only after they had moved out into the roads, then Yalta on the 15th, and the last ships left Kerch on the 16th. Admiral Kedrov, the fleet commander, ran the operation, and the French cruiser Waldeck-Rousseau covered it, leaving last.
Another count by port gives about 65,000 from Sevastopol, nearly 13,000 from Yalta, nearly 30,000 from Feodosia and over 32,000 from Kerch. Eyewitnesses such as Slashchov and Obolensky wrote that the evacuation took place amid disorder and panic, and at Feodosia and Kerch some Astrakhan and Terek Cossacks were left behind for lack of ships. At sea the destroyer Zhivoy sank in a storm on the 15th with 250 people aboard. At Constantinople the army was disarmed and sent to camps at Gallipoli (1st Corps), Çatalca (Don Cossack corps) and on Lemnos (the Kuban Cossacks), and the fleet moved to Bizerte in Tunisia between December 1920 and February 1921. On 2 November Trotsky had written that Crimea must become "the grave of the last White Guards", and those who stayed behind went through the Red Terror carried out by Béla Kun and Zemlyachka under Pyatakov's direction. Estimates of the number executed differ widely, from at least 12,000 to 50,000 and as many as 120,000 according to the English source. Soviet historiography often presented the evacuation as the end of the Civil War.