Ufa operation (1919)
우파 작전 (1919)
The operation of 25 May to 20 June 1919 in which Mikhail Frunze's Southern Group crossed the Belaya River and retook Ufa, the last stage of the Eastern Front counteroffensive. On the night of 7 to 8 June Vasily Chapayev's 25th Division crossed at Krasny Yar north of Ufa and widened its bridgehead, and on 9 June Ufa was in Red hands. Kolchak's Western Army escaped encirclement but had to fall back towards the Urals.
In depth
Beaten at Belebey, the Whites fell back behind the Belaya to hold Ufa and massed six infantry regiments at the mouth of the Belaya below Ufa to strike the Turkestan Army's flank. That White strike force crossed the river on 28 May and was smashed by the Red 5th Army the next day; the 5th Army crossed the Belaya on 30 May and took Birsk on 7 June. The Reds made the sector south of Ufa their main axis, with the 24th Rifle and 3rd Cavalry Divisions, but the crossing there failed, and only the 25th Division and the 5th Army's 26th Division in the north won bridgeheads at Krasny Yar and Akhlystino between 4 and 7 June. On the 8th Frunze moved the reserve 31st Division to the northern flank and put the whole 25th Division across, and on the 9th Chapayev's troops entered Ufa after heavy fighting. The next day the 31st Division cut the Ufa–Chelyabinsk railway 18 kilometres east of the city; the Whites began a general retreat on 16 June and slipped out of the encirclement with heavy losses on 19 and 20 June. Advancing on a 135-kilometre front at 6 to 7.5 kilometres a day, the Reds won the Ufa industrial district and opened the way into the southern Urals.
Ufa changed hands three times in half a year: the Reds took it on 31 December 1918 and Kolchak's troops on 13 March 1919. On 1 April Trotsky told the Moscow Soviet that "our losing Perm earlier and now Ufa is a heavy blow for us", while insisting that no catastrophe awaited on the Eastern Front, and on 7 April, in "To the Urals!", he wrote that "Ufa, Zlatoust, Yekaterinburg and Perm must return to the family of workers' and peasants' Russia". The recapture of Ufa in June was the first link in that chain. Chapayev's crossing of the Belaya became the subject of the 1968 Soviet film Storm over the Belaya.