As a proponent of change in pre-industrial, populist Russia, Chernyshevsky accepted the peasant obshchina (commune) as the basis for the new Russia. He believed that the obshchina not only represented a truly democratic (egalitarian) socialist society, but also enabled Russia to avoid the evils of capitalism that existed in European industrial societies. However, Chernyshevsky insisted that revolution, not gradualism, was necessary for the transformation of Russia, and even then it could occur only through the dedicated commitment of revolutionary activists, which he called the new revolutionary archetypes.
By 1902 proletarian (Marxian) socialism had replaced agrarian populism within the Russian revolutionary movement. Faced with a declining socialist revolutionary radicalism, Lenin sought its revitalization. Like Chernyshevsky, Lenin favored the overthrow of the tsarist government and rejected the economic gradualism (called economism) of his time. Lenin did more than create a new revolutionary prototype; however, he formulated a new revolutionary catechism (Bolshevism) for conducting the revolution, one that eventually overthrew the tsarist government in 1917. See also: CHERNYSHEVSKY, NIKOLAI GAVRILOVICH; LENIN, VLADIMIR ILICH
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Tucker, Robert C, ed. (1975). The Lenin Anthology. New York: Norton. Venturi, Franco. (1966). The Roots of Revolution: A History of the Populist and Socialist Movements in Nineteenth Century Russia. New York: Grosset’s Universal Library.
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Within weeks of the October 1917 Revolution, thousands of tsarist officers and supporters of the Provisional Government began armed resistance against the new regime. The Bolsheviks, who saw the anticommunists as more united than they actually were, named these men “White,” a term taken from the reactionary forces during the French Revolution (the communist forces against which the Whites fought were called the Reds). There were, in fact, many disparate White armies, each under its own commander and with its own objectives. They lacked a central authority to coordinate action or policies on the far-flung battlefields of the Civil War. Politically they were just as divided because some White officers were monarchists while others wanted re-establishment of the Provisional Government. In the end the White armies were bound only by a common hatred of the communists and a shared desire to retain the old borders of the Russian Empire.
The lack of unity among the White armies was but one of the reasons for their defeat. When they were successful on the battlefield, the Allied powers (Britain, France, and the United States) provided critical military assistance, but as the Whites began to lose, the aid disappeared, consigning the Whites to their fate. The fluid nature of the civil war also meant that the Whites never created permanent institutions. Matters were not helped by the officers’ reluctance to involve themselves in political matters, leaving chaos and banditry to reign in much of their territory. Thus, although it was not deliberate policy, White troops were allowed to commit atrocities during the war, such as pogroms against the Jews who lived in White-occupied lands. None of this endeared Whites to the population. Most devastating for the Whites was a paucity of new solutions to the problems that their country faced and a consequent inability to rally ordinary Russians and other nationalities to their cause.
The best known of the White armies were those led by Anton Denikin, Alexander Kolchak, and Nikolai Yudenich. Large Cossack units also fought alongside several of the White armies. One of the first anticommunist forces was the Volunteer Army, commanded first by Mkhail Alekseev and then Lavr Kornilov. When Kornilov was killed in battle, Denikin took command and led an offensive that came within 300 kilometers (186.4 miles) of Moscow. The Red Army, with twice as many men and strong cavalry units under Semeon Budenny, stopped him and forced the Volunteer Army into headlong retreat. Denikin resigned and was replaced by Peter Wrangel, whose counteroffensive was also pushed back. The tattered remnants of the Volunteer Army were evacuated from the Crimea in March 1920.
Denikin never coordinated his attacks with Kolchak’s forces, which in 1919 made spectacular gains against the Bolsheviks in eastern Russia. Kolchak claimed to represent the legitimate authority of Russia, but when Red units led by Mikhail Tukhachevsky defeated his men (including Siberian and Western armies), his bid to win the recognition of the Allied powers was doomed. Yudenich meanwhile tried and failed to capture Pet-rograd with his Northern (later “Northwestern”) Army. The collapse of their armies forced most White officers into exile in Germany and Paris, where they would plot their return to Russia for the next seventy years. See also: CIVIL WAR OF 1917- 1922; COSSACKS; DENIKIN, ANTON IVANOVICH; KOLCHAK, ALEXANDER VASILIE-VICH; YUDENICH, NIKOLAI NIKOLAYEVICH
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Lincoln, Bruce. (1989). Red Victory. A History of the Russian Civil War. New York: Simon and Schuster. Luckett, Richard. (1971). White Generals. An Account of the White Movement and the Russian Civil War. New York: Viking Press. Mawdsley, Evan. (1987). The Russian Civil War. Boston: Allen amp; Unwin. Wade, Rex A. (2001). The Bolshevik Revolution and Russian Civil War. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
MARY R. HABECK WHITE MOVEMENT See CIVIL WAR OF 1917-1922;
The White Sea (Belomor) Canal in Karelia rises from Lake Onega in the south to a maximum of 108 meters (118.1 feet) at Lake Vyg and then descends to the White Sea in the north. The canal, which is 227 kilometers (141.1 miles) long (including thirty-seven artificially constructed waterways, nineteen locks, fifteen dams, and forty-nine dikes),
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was constructed in twenty months (November 1931-July 1933) by more than 100,000 gulag prisoners using local natural resources (rock, peat, dirt, timber), an endless supply of slave labor, and primitive tools (pickaxes, wheelbarrows, shovels, horses, and wooden pulleys). Because the shipping season is limited to six months and the canal is often shallow and narrow, traffic consists mainly of barges and small passenger or cargo vessels.
Contemplated since the sixteenth century and constructed under Josef V. Stalin, the canal shortened the journey from Leningrad to Arkhangelsk from twenty days to eight. Originally a secret military project, it was designed to enable northern troops and supply transports and sea access should Leningrad face a Baltic blockade. Economically, the canal was intended to exploit Karelia’s natural resources. Politically, it was a signature forced- labor, large construction project of the first Five-Year Plan. The government promoted the waterway as emblematic of Soviet power and Stalinist ideology, and as exemplifying reforging, the process through which hard labor re- education programs, supervised by the secret police, remade common criminals and political prisoners into model Soviet citizens. Many reforged workers perished during the construction of the canal; the survivors were transferred to the Moscow-Volga Canal project or freed. The White Sea Canal embodies the excesses of Stalinism and immortalizes the thousands who died there. See also: FIVE-YEAR PLANS; GULAG
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Baron, Nick. (2001). “Conflict and Complicity: The Expansion of the Karelian Gulag, 1923-1933.” Cahiers du Monde Russe 42:615-648. Ruder, Cynthia A. (1998). Making History for Stalin: The Story of the Belomor Canal. Gainesville: University Press of Florida.
(1605-1662), merchant and factory owner.
Known in Russia as Andrei Denisovich Vinius, Andries Winius was born in Amsterdam in 1605 and died in Russia in 1662. His parents were Diony-sius Tjerckszoon Winius and Maritgen Andries1666 dochter Vekemans. He married Geertruyd van Rijn in 1628 and had three children: Andreas, Maria, and Matthias.
