In January–February 1920, the forces of the South-West Front pushed back the AFSR and, on 7 February 1920, entered Odessa, but attempts to force an entry into Crimea were rebuffed by White forces under the command of Ia. A. Slashchov. In April–May 1920, as the Soviet–Polish War moved into its active phase, forces of the South-West Front were driven out of Mozyr, Ovruch, and Kiev and into left-bank Ukraine. An offensive in May 1920 recaptured Kiev, and by July, the front’s forces were threatening L′vov and Lublin, but the Polish counteroffensive of August–September 1920 pushed them back into Ukraine. (Some historians claim that the front commander’s failure to capture L′vov and to support the forces of the Western Front was caused by the baleful influence of the chairman of the front revvoensovet, J. V. Stalin.) The South-West Front was also confronted with the breakout from Crimea, in early June 1920, of the Russian Army of General P. N. Wrangel, forcing a withdrawal to the right bank of the Dnepr. A counteroffensive in August 1920 proved effective, and the forces of the South-West Front deployed against Crimea were then reorganized into an independent, reconstituted Southern Front, against Wrangel. In late December 1920, the remaining forces of the South-West Front were transferred to the control of the Kiev Military District.
The commander of the South-West Front throughout its existence (10 January–31 December 1920) was A. I. Egorov. Its chief of staff was N. N. Petin.
SOVIET–AFGHAN TREATY OF FRIENDSHIP (28 February 1921). This agreement between the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and Afghanistan (signed for the Soviet government by G. V. Chicherin and L. M. Karakhan, and for Afghanistan by Muhamed Wali Khan, Mirza Muhamed Khan, and Guliama Sidlyk Khan) was one of a series of bilateral treaties signed at this time by the Soviet government to win international recognition and thereby (it was hoped) to increase its security as the civil wars wound down. (Others included the Anglo-Soviet Trade Agreement and the Soviet–Turkish Treaty of Moscow, both of 16 March 1921, and the Soviet–Persian Treaty of Friendship of 26 February 1921.) Under its terms, the contracting parties offered mutual recognition and arranged for the establishment of consulates on each others’ territory and agreed upon “the freedom of Eastern nations,” including the khanates of Bokhara and Khiva (which were by then, in fact, under Soviet control), “on the basis of independence” (Articles VII and VIII), while Soviet Russia agreed to return to Afghanistan undefined “border areas” that had been occupied by imperial Russian forces in the 19th century, to allow “free and untaxed” transit of Afghan goods on Soviet territory (Article VI), and to “provide Afghanistan with financial and other material assistance” (Article X). (A separate protocol spelled out that this assistance would amount to a subsidy of one million rubles per annum, the construction of a telegraph from Kushkh to Kabul, and the provision of “technical and other specialists.”)
The Soviet government hoped that, by establishing a treaty relationship with Afghanistan, it could present itself as a friend of the colonial world; prevent attacks on Soviet territory from Basmachi fighters based across the border; and dissuade the emir, Amanullah khan, from offering aid to the Basmachi, as well as checking British influence in Kabul and profiting from Kabul’s resentment of the settlement imposed on it by the British, the Treaty of Rawalpindi of 8 August 1919 (at the end of the Third Afghan War). This was not, however, a Soviet–Afghan alliance against Britain. Rather, it was designed to protect each of the signatories from the danger of the other concluding an agreement with Britain against it; Article II of the treaty therefore bound both signatories “not to enter into any military or political agreement with a third state which might prejudice either of the contracting parties.” After the treaty had been ratified, F. F. Raskol′nikov was sent to Kabul as the first Soviet ambassador to Afghanistan.
soviet anarchists. See anarchism.
Soviet–Finnish conflict. This conflict, which can be regarded as perhaps the most serious of the so-called Kinship Wars, broke out on 6 November 1921, following a rebellion in Eastern Karelia that Soviet historians always claimed was provoked by forces that originated in Finland and were covertly supported by the Finnish government, in breach of the Treaty of Tartu (14 October 1920). Battles involved between 2,000 and 5,000 Karelian rebels, who are sometimes referred to as Forest Guerrillas (Metsäsissi in Finnish)—including perhaps 500 volunteers from Finland, who had been permitted (and even encouraged) to cross the border into Soviet Russia by the Finnish government—and 20,000 troops of the Red Army. Red forces crushed the rebels in a series of battles in January to February 1922, at which point aid to them was also cut off by Finland. The conflict ended with the signing of agreements between Finland and Soviet Russia regarding measures to maintain the viability of their common border (21 March and 1 June 1922, signed at Moscow and Helsinki, respectively). Nevertheless, some 10,000 Karelian refugees had fled into Finland by the end of 1922.
SOVIET–GEORGIAN WAR. This conflict, between the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) and the Democratic Republic of Georgia, lasted from 15 February to 17 March 1921. It resulted in the overthrow of the independent Georgian republic, which had been dominated by Mensheviks of the Georgian Social Democratic Labor Party, and the establishment of the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic, which was loyal to Moscow. The RSFSR had recognized the independence of Georgia in the Treaty of Moscow of 7 May 1920, but on 14 February 1921, influential Georgian Bolsheviks (notably J. V. Stalin and G. K. Ordzhonikidze) in the party’s Caucasian Bureau (Kavbiuro) obtained the agreement of V. I. Lenin and the party leadership to invade Georgia, ostensibly to assist a workers’ and peasants’ rebellion in the country (although Georgian Mensheviks claimed that discontent in the country had been artificially stimulated by Moscow).
Having established Soviet rule in Azerbaijan in April 1920, Ordzhonikidze had moved immediately to invade Georgia, but Soviet forces were repulsed, and a Communist rising in Tiflis was suppressed by the People’s Guard. Subsequently, preoccupied with the defeat of the Russian Army of P. N. Wrangel and with the escalation of the Soviet–Polish War, Soviet attention temporarily shifted from Transcaucasia. Also, some leading Bolsheviks, notably L. D. Trotsky and K. B. Radek, argued that the invasion of Georgia would be premature. With Wrangel defeated and a treaty arranged with Poland, however, by early 1921 Moscow was ready to act. Another factor was that by this time all Allied forces had withdrawn from Transcaucasia, making their intervention to save Georgia less likely. Having engineered Communist uprisings in the Armenian-populated region of Lori, among the Ossetians of northeast Georgia, and elsewhere, on 16 February 1921 Red Army forces, mustering 50,000 men, entered Georgia from Azerbaijan and Armenia, through the Daryal and Mamisoni passes in the north and along the Black Sea coast. After heavy fighting, the 11th Red Army entered Tiflis on 25 February 1921, and the Georgian SSR was proclaimed (the 35,000-strong Georgian army, under Generals Giorgi Mazniashvili and Giorgi Kvinitadze, having withdrawn to Kutaisi, in the west). Soviet forces, joined by Abkhazian peasant militias, then moved against the remnants of the Georgian army, capturing Gagra (1 March 1921), Sukhumi (4 March 1921), Kutaisi (10 March 1921), Poti (14 March 1921), and other centers, as the Georgian army fell apart.