The second Southern Front (sometimes termed the “Southern Front against Wrangel”), with its staff based at Khar′kov, was created by an order of the Revvoensovet of the Republic on 21 September 1920, with the purpose of combating the forces of General P. N. Wrangel’s Russian Army, which had burst out of Crimea into the northern Tauride. Its complement included the 4th (18 October–10 December 1920), 6th (21 September–10 December 1920), and 13th (21 September–12 November 1920) Red Armies; the 1st (21 October–10 December 1920) and 2nd (21 September–6 December 1920) Cavalry Armies; and other smaller units. The Revolutionary-Insurgent Army of Ukraine of Nestor Makhno also played a major role in the operations of the second Southern Front. Forces of the Southern Front engaged in a bloody struggle against the Whites in northern Tauride; rebuffed Wrangel’s attempts to create a bridgehead on the right bank of the Dnepr; breached the Whites’ defense of the Perekop isthmus; and in November 1920, captured Crimea and drove Wrangel’s army into emigration. On 10 December 1920, the Southern Front was disbanded and its forces placed under the command of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. The commander of the second Southern Front was M. V. Frunze. Its chiefs of staff were P. P. Karatygin (acting, 21–27 September 1920) and Jānis Pauka (27 September–10 December 1920).
SOUTHERN RUSSIAN (SPECIAL SOUTHERN) ARMY. This anti-Bolshevik formation was created on 3 October 1918, on the order of Ataman P. N. Krasnov (and with the assistance of the monarchist society “Our Homeland”), as part of the All-Great Don Cossack Host. Commanded by General N. I. Ivanov (2 October 1918–27 January 1919) until he died of typhus at Novocherkassk, and subsequently commanded by D. G. Shcherbachev, it consisted of the Voronezh Corps (2,000 men under Major General Shil′dbakh-Litovets), the Astrakhan Corps (3,000 men under Ataman Prince Tundutov), and the Saratov Corps and His Majesty’s Life Guard Squadron (commanded by S. Mikh). Only the Saratov Corps of the Southern Russian Army saw action against Bolshevik forces on the lower Volga before, in March 1919, its units were redistributed between the Volunteer Army and the Don Army of the Armed Forces of South Russia, thereby ending the army’s existence.
SOUTH RUSSIAN GOVERNMENT. See GOVERNMENT OF SOUTH RUSSIA.
SOUTH-WEST CAUCASIAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC. This short-lived polity was centered at Kars (and is known to Turks as the Kars Republic) and claimed sovereignty over the predominantly Muslim-inhabited regions of Kars, Batumi, and Yerevan and the Akhaltsikhe and Akhalkalaki districts of Tiflis guberniia. These regions had been assigned to the Ottoman Empire under the terms of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (3 March 1918), but when Russian forces withdrew, fighting broke out between the invading Turkish forces and the forces of the newly created Armenian Democratic Republic. That conflict was ended by the Treaty of Batumi (4 June 1918), which again assigned the disputed regions to Turkey. However, when it was announced that, under the terms of the Armistice of Mudros (30 October 1918), which took Turkey out of the First World War, Ottoman forces should withdraw to the 1914 frontier and disarm, on 1 December 1918, a Muslim National Committee at Kars declared unilateral independence from Turkey (and Russia) of the border regions in a new republic under President Cihangirzade İbrahim Bey, a general of the Ottoman army. This act was facilitated by the fact that although Turkish forces had implemented the terms of Mudros to the extent that they withdrew beyond the 1877 frontier with Russia, they had not retreated from Kars (which had been awarded to Russia by the Treaty of San Stefano of 1878, following the Russo–Turkish War of 1877–1878).
Local British forces, which had occupied Batumi and Baku, supported an Armenian delegation that was sent to Kars in January 1919, but negotiations stalled and violence erupted between Armenia and the forces of the putative Kars Republic, which the Armenians (and the British) regarded as a Turkish puppet state intended to circumvent the Mudros armistice and maintain a Turkish hold on the territories won (or won back) from Russia during the previous year. British forces sent from Batumi, on the orders of General William M. Thomson, eventually occupied Kars on 19 April 1919 and arrested members of the government (12 of whom, along with some 125 other Turkish wartime commanders and politicians, were subsequently exiled to Malta by the Allies). They then disbanded the republic and placed Kars province under Armenian rule (although under the Soviet–Turkish Treaty of Kars of 13 October 1921, Kars would eventually revert to Turkey).
SOUTH-WEST FRONT. This Red front was created on 10 January 1920, according to a directive of the main commander in chief of the Red Army, following a reorganization of the Southern Front. Its task was to clear right-bank Ukraine and Crimea of the remnants of the forces of the Armed Forces of South Russia (AFSR) and to defend Kiev against the possibility of an attack from Poland. Its staff was located initially at Kursk and later at Khar′kov. Included in the South-West Front were the 12th (10 January–13 August 1920 and 27 September–25 December 1920), 13th (10 January–21 September 1920), and 14th (10 January–31 December 1920) Red Armies; the 1st Cavalry Army (17 April–14 August 1920); the 6th Red Army (8–21 September 1920); the Ukrainian Labor Army (30 January–25 September 1920); and the forces of the Gomel Fortified District. From 19 May to 13 June 1920, the Fastovsk group of forces (the 44th and 45th Rifle Divisions and the 3rd Detachment of the Dnepr Military Flotilla), commanded by I. E. Iakir, was also attached to the South-West Front.