Defence of Tsaritsyn (1918–1919)
차리친 방어 (1918–1919)
The Red Army's defence of Tsaritsyn (now Volgograd) on the lower Volga against three sieges by Pyotr Krasnov's Don Cossacks between July 1918 and early 1919. The city lay on the route by which Baku oil and southern grain reached Moscow and kept the Don and Ural Cossacks apart, and because Stalin and Voroshilov took part in its command it was glorified in Soviet historiography and propaganda as the "Red Verdun". Pyotr Wrangel's forces took the city on 30 June 1919, and the Red Army retook it on 3 January 1920.
In depth
Stalin, sent in June 1918 to procure grain for Moscow, soon took a hand in the local command and with Voroshilov set up the North Caucasus Military District to unite the Red forces of the region. Krasnov's Don Army cut the railway at the end of July and laid siege to the city (a first siege from July to September and a second from September to October), and by mid-October, joined by Konstantin Mamontov's cavalry, it had almost surrounded the city. In these weeks Stalin urged Voroshilov to ignore the orders of the Southern Front commander Pavel Sytin, clashing with Trotsky and Vācietis, and had military specialists such as the former tsarist general Andrei Snesarev arrested. On 15 October Dmitry Zhloba's "Steel Division", marching up from the North Caucasus against orders, struck Krasnov's forces by surprise and broke the siege, and in November Stalin was recalled for insubordination. When a third siege from December 1918 to February 1919 also failed, the Don Cossacks placed themselves under the Volunteer Army's command as part of the Armed Forces of South Russia.
In the summer of 1919 the Whites repaired the railway from the Kuban to Tsaritsyn to bring up tanks supplied by Britain, and on 30 June Wrangel's troops entered the city, taking 40,000 Red prisoners. On 3 July Denikin announced the advance on Moscow at a victory parade in Tsaritsyn. From August a Red strike group under Vasily Shorin tried to retake the city but was held off by Wrangel's defence and Mamontov's raid on its rear, and only on 3 January 1920 did the Red Army recover Tsaritsyn. In 1925 the city was renamed Stalingrad, and the defence of Tsaritsyn, inflated into a military triumph of Stalin's, became one of the most widely depicted episodes of the civil war in Soviet art and propaganda.