Great Siberian Ice March
대시베리아 빙상 행군
The winter retreat of the remnants of Alexander Kolchak's White Eastern Front, after the fall of Omsk in November 1919, more than 2,000 kilometres on foot along the Trans-Siberian Railway to Chita, which it reached in early March 1920. With the railway in the hands of the Czechoslovak Legion, the troops had to march through bitter frost along the old post road and frozen rivers, and their commander Vladimir Kappel died of frostbite and pneumonia on 26 January 1920. Sergei Voitsekhovsky took over and led the army across frozen Lake Baikal in February, and some 20,000 or more reached Chita, ruled by Grigory Semyonov, in early March.
In depth
When the Tobol front broke in the autumn of 1919 and Omsk fell on 14 November, Kolchak's armies, beaten again in the Omsk and Novonikolaevsk operations, streamed east in disorder. Kappel, made commander of the Eastern Front in mid-December, ordered that anyone who wavered could leave and crossed the Shcheglovsk taiga with the rest in four days, abandoning nearly all heavy weapons and wounded. At Krasnoyarsk the garrison commander Bronislav Zinevich joined a Bolshevik-led workers' rising and barred the way, while Genrikh Eiche's Red 5th Army pursued from behind and partisans such as Pyotr Shchetinkin struck the flanks. In early January, marching along the frozen Kan river, Kappel fell through the ice and suffered frostbite; after his legs were amputated he caught pneumonia and died at the Utai siding on 26 January, and his men carried his body with them to the end.
Kolchak had travelled ahead by train under Czechoslovak protection, but in January 1920 the Legion handed him over at Irkutsk to the SR and Menshevik Political Centre. Voitsekhovsky's troops attacked Irkutsk to free him, but Kolchak was shot on 7 February; abandoning the attack, they bypassed the city and from 11 February crossed frozen Lake Baikal over several days. Between 30,000 and 35,000 people crossed the lake, and 20,000 to 25,000 troops entered Semyonov's Chita in early March. Voitsekhovsky awarded every participant the badge "For the Great Siberian Campaign", and the surviving units fought on in the Far East. Under a Party Central Committee order not to advance beyond Irkutsk, the Red Army halted there rather than confront Japanese-backed Transbaikalia, turning its strength to the Polish front.