Commanders in chief of the Western Army were General M. V. Khanzhin (24 December 1918–20 June 1919) and General K. V. Sakharov (21 June–22 July 1919). Its chiefs of staff were Major-General S. A. Shchepikhin (1 January–21 May 1919); Major-General K. V. Sakharov (20 May–20 June 1919); and Colonel V. I. Oberiukhtin (22 June–22 July 1919).
WESTERN FRONT. This Red front was created, in accordance with a directive of the main commander in chief of the Red Army (Jukums Vācietis) of 12 February 1919, with the aim of coordinating the activities of Soviet forces in western and northwestern Russia. Its staff was located initially at Staraia Russa, then, in succession, at Molodechno, Dvinsk, Smolensk, and Minsk. Its complement included the 7th Red Army (19 February 1919–10 May 1921), the (Red) Army of Soviet Latvia (from 7 June 1919), the 15th Red Army (19 February 1919–4 October 1920), the Western Army (19 February 1919–7 May 1921; from 13 March 1919 the Belorussian–Lithuanian Army and from 9 June 1919 the 16th Red Army), the Estonian Red Army (19 February–30 May 1919), the 12th Red Army (16 June–27 July 1919, 7 September–17 October 1919, and 14 August–27 September 1920), the Mozyr Group of Forces (18 May–September 1920), the 3rd Red Army (11 June–31 December 1920), the 4th Red Army (11 June–18 October 1920), the 1st Cavalry Army (14 August–27 September 1920), and the Dnepr Military Flotilla (12 February–22 December 1920). Initially numbering some 81,500 men, at the height of its activity (in the summer of 1920, when it was of central importance in the Soviet–Polish War) the Western Front eventually controlled over 180,000 men.
From the moment of its formation, the Western Front saw extensive battles along a 2,000-mile theater of operations, involving clashes with forces of the Allied intervention around Murmansk, White and White Finnish forces around Petrozavodsk and Olonets and in Karelia, and against White and nationalist forces in the Baltic region, as well as forces of the Austro-German intervention (including the Baltic Landeswehr and other Freikorps units) and the Poles. Red forces were largely pushed out of the emergent Baltic States by July 1919 (during the Estonian War of Independence, the Latvian War of Independence, and the Lithuanian Wars of Independence), while in Belorussia the Poles advanced as far as the River Berezina. By August 1919, the front stretched from near Narva, on the Gulf of Finland, through Pskov and Polotsk to the Berezina. In June, and from August to October 1919, forces of the Western Front (specifically the 7th and 15th Red Armies) held off two advances from Estonia toward Petrograd of the North-West Army of General N. N. Iudenich. In 1920, during the Soviet–Polish War, the Western Front was the most important area of battle of the Soviet Republic, and by mid-August of that year, its forces were approaching the gates of Warsaw. The Polish counteroffensive, however, drove them out of Poland and Lithuania and back into Belorussia by October 1920. The forces of the Western Front were thereafter kept on alert against any further Polish incursions, before being transformed into the forces of the Western Military District on 8 April 1924.
Commanders of the Western Front were D. N. Nadezhnyi (19 February–22 July 1919): V. M. Gittis (22 July 1919–29 April 1920); M. N. Tukhachevskii (29 April 1920–4 March 1921; and 24 January 1922–26 March 1924); I. I. Zakharov (acting, 4 March–20 September 1921); A. I. Egorov (20 September 1921–24 January 1922); A. I. Kork (acting, 26 March–5 April 1924); and A. I. Kuk (acting, 5–8 April 1924). Its chiefs of staff were N. N. Domozhirov (19 February–26 May 1919); N. N. Petin (26 May–17 October 1919); A. M. Peremytov (acting, 17 October–13 November 1919); V. S. Lazarevich (13 October 1919–9 February 1920); N. N. Shvarts (25 February–30 September 1920); N. V. Sollogub (1 October–6 December 1920); P. I. Ermolin (6 December 1920–7 June 1921); M. A. Batorskii (7 June–23 November 1921); S. A. Mezheninov (23 November 1921–6 July 1923); I. I. Gludin (acting, 6 July–30 September 1923); and A. I. Kuk (30 September 1923–8 April 1924).
WESTERN RUSSIAN (BERLIN) GOVERNMENT. This anti-Bolshevik authority was formed in the German capital on 7 July 1919, by the right-wing Russian Political Conference, and was headed by V. V. Biskupskii. It had as its aim the establishment, in the Baltic theater of the “Russian” Civil Wars, of a 220,000-strong, pro-German force that would fight against the Soviet government. The force was to be financed by German industrialists and bankers, in return for Russian recognition of the independence of Finland and the autonomy of the Baltic provinces. However, the Western Russian (Berlin) Government was unable to gain the support of the generally pro-Allied White leaders in Siberia and South Russia, or of the White delegations in France during the Paris Peace Conference, and its only contribution to the anti-Bolshevik war effort seems to have been to supply arms to the Western Volunteer Army of P. R. Bermondt-Avalov. Following the establishment of the Russian Western Governing Council at Mitau (Jelgava) in September 1919, Biskupskii’s regime ceased to operate.
WESTERN SIBERIAN COMMISSARIAT. This anti-Bolshevik grouping had been charged by P. Ia. Derber with the organization of an anti-Bolshevik underground in Western Siberia following the dispersal from Tomsk (in January–February 1918) of the Provisional Government of Autonomous Siberia and his own flight to the Far East, in January 1918. The Western Siberian Commissariat first convened, in secret, at Novonikolaevsk on 14 February 1918, and subsequently gained the support of the cooperative movement in Siberia, notably the Zakupsbyt organization (which had its headquarters at Novonikolaevsk), but had little success in persuading proto-White, anti-Bolshevik officers’ organizations to recognize its authority (and little more success in attempting to establish a twin, Eastern Siberian Commissariat).
On 26 May 1918, the Western Siberian Commissariat emerged from the underground, in the wake of the collapse of Soviet power in the area during the revolt of the Czechoslovak Legion, and, on 1 June 1918 placed itself at the forefront of the Democratic Counter-Revolution, proclaiming its provisional authority over Western Siberia pending the reconvening of the Siberian Regional Duma. It then transferred its headquarters to Omsk, published a moderate-left program that envisaged the maintenance of some elements of the Soviet system (including keeping certain industrial concerns under state control and a toleration of workers’ soviets), and began the formation of the armed force that was to become the Siberian Army. Its Governing Council (consisting of four rather obscure members of the local organization of the Party of Socialists-Revolutionaries, P. Ia. Mikhailov, V. O. Sidorov, M. E. Lindberg, and B. D. Markov) met with opposition, however, from its own head of the Department of Military Affairs, A. N. Grishin-Almazov, and its Business Cabinet, chaired by V. V. Sapozhnikov, in which more conservative (and forceful) representatives of Siberian regionalism predominated. The machinations of these elements, together with the scheming at Omsk of other, less radical members of the Derber government (notably I. A. Mikhailov), forced the Western Siberian Commissariat to cede power to the Provisional Siberian Government on 1 July 1918, in what could be said to be the beginning of the end for the Democratic Counter-Revolution in Siberia.