Defence of Petrograd (1919)
페트로그라드 방어 (1919)
The fighting of autumn 1919 in which the Red 7th Army and the workers of Petrograd held the city against Yudenich's Northwestern Army, advancing from Estonia, and then drove it back. In mid-October the Whites took Yamburg, Luga, Krasnoye Selo and Gatchina and by about the 20th reached Tsarskoye Selo and the Pulkovo Heights, but they were thrown back by the defence Trotsky organised and the counteroffensive that began on the 21st. Caught between the 7th and 15th Armies, the Northwestern Army was driven to the Estonian border by mid-November and disarmed there.
In depth
The Northwestern Army opened with a diversionary attack towards Pskov on 28 September, began its main offensive along the Yamburg axis on 10 October and took Yamburg on the 11th, Luga by about the 13th, and Krasnoye Selo and Gatchina on the 16th and 17th. The bulk of the Red Army was in the south facing Denikin, then closing on Orel and Tula, and the 7th Army, stripped of cadres and units for the Southern Front, was demoralised. In My Life Trotsky recalled that Lenin leaned towards giving up Petrograd to shorten the front, that he opposed this hard, and that Lenin finally said: "Well then, let us try." He wrote that Krestinsky and the Petrograd leaders took his side, though Zinoviev there was in a state of panic. On 15 October the Politburo resolved "not to surrender" Petrograd, and the draft Trotsky put to the Council of Defence read: "Defend Petrograd to the last drop of blood, yielding not a single inch and carrying the fight into the streets of the city." In an article written on the night of the 16th, on the train to Petrograd, he urged preparation for street fighting, saying that Whites who broke into the huge city would be caught in "a labyrinth of stone". The city was divided among internal-defence staffs in its eleven districts and fortified with barricades, wire and gun positions on squares and crossroads, while workers, Communists and Komsomol members were mobilised one call after another. In case Estonia or Finland intervened, Trotsky also had a plan prepared to withdraw the army and the workers to the south-east.
The White 3rd Division ignored orders to cut the Nikolayevskaya railway at Tosno and turned towards Pavlovsk instead, and the Reds brought reinforcements from Moscow along that line. The 7th Army held the Pulkovo line on the 21st, counterattacked on the 22nd and retook Tsarskoye Selo and Pavlovsk by the evening of the 23rd, and on the 24th the 15th Army to the south joined the offensive and took Luga on the 31st. The Whites abandoned Gatchina without a fight on the night of 3 November, and the Reds entered Yamburg on the 14th. In an order of 18 October Trotsky forbade "false reports of fierce fighting where there was fierce panic", and on the 24th he warned: "Woe to the unworthy soldier who raises his knife over an unarmed prisoner or a deserter!" He also recalled riding out himself to turn back a regiment retreating at Aleksandrovka. Estonia, then negotiating peace, disarmed and interned the retreating army, and many died there of typhus. Trotsky and his train as a whole were awarded the Order of the Red Banner for the defence.