Eastern Front counteroffensive (1919)

After a conference at Kazan on 10 April the Revolutionary Military Council of the Eastern Front ordered Frunze's Southern Group to strike from south to north and smash the Western Army, and combined the 2nd and 3rd Armies into a Northern Group under Vasily Shorin to deal with Gajda's Siberian Army. Frunze massed two thirds of the Southern Group's infantry and artillery and all its cavalry around Buzuluk, planning to hit 23,000 Whites with 42,000 men on a 220-kilometre sector. From 22 to 25 April Gaya Gai's 1st Army crushed Belov's group north of Orenburg and the remnants of the White IV Corps went over to the Reds, laying bare the Western Army's rear. On 28 April the Reds routed two White divisions south-east of Buguruslan and retook Buguruslan on 4 May, Bugulma on the 13th and Belebey on the 17th. Alexander Samoilo, who had replaced Kamenev as Eastern Front commander in early May, halted the pursuit on 18 May, but after Frunze objected it was ordered resumed the next day. On 9 June Vasily Chapayev's 25th Division crossed the Belaya and retook Ufa, and on 16 June the Western Army began a general retreat eastward along the whole front. In the north the 2nd Army retook Sarapul, Izhevsk and Votkinsk in early June, and according to the Russian demographer Boris Urlanis the White forces on the Eastern Front shrank from 135,000 to 87,000 men between March and June.

When the counteroffensive reached the Urals the Red leadership split over how far to pursue. Trotsky recalled in My Life that the commander-in-chief Vatsetis "wanted the Eastern Front to winter on the mountain range" and to shift several divisions from the east to the south, where Denikin was growing more dangerous, and that he supported the plan. The Eastern Front commander Sergey Kamenev and the Military Council members Smilga and Lashevich objected: "Kolchak is so badly beaten that not many forces are needed to pursue him; the main thing is to give him no breathing space, otherwise he will recover over the winter and in spring we shall have to begin the eastern operation all over again." The Central Committee ruled against the high command and for Kamenev; Vatsetis was removed and in early July Kamenev became commander-in-chief. Trotsky granted that his view of the Southern Front as the greater danger proved right but that the Eastern Front command had judged Kolchak's army correctly, and that "the decision of the Central Committee turned out to be right". The Eastern Front released forces for the south and still pursued Kolchak through Chelyabinsk deep into Siberia.