One of my pet subjects is the Russian Civil War. I’ve long been fascinated by the way that Russia split into so many competing feifdoms between 1917-1921. Most nominally supported either the Reds (Communists) or the Whites (Tsarists) but, in reality, they were usually run more for the benefit of their local warlord.
So I was thrilled today when I found an email from James Bisher telling me about his new civil war book - White Terror: Cossak Warlords of the Trans-Siberian.
Bisher’s book builds around the biography of the most notorious
warlord, Ataman Grigori Semenov, following his life from a small
Cossack village to intrigue in China’s rebellious Mongolian outback,
through heroic Carpathian and Mesopotamian campaigns of the Great War,
to the revolutionary chaos of Moscow, back to counter-revolution in the
far-flung provinces of the Russian Far East, wandering the world in
exile from Seoul to Tientsin to Vancouver to New York, then into the
organized crime world of Japanese intelligence in Manchukuo. Semenov’s
associate warlords are also profiled, including Baron Roman
Ungern-Shternberg and Ataman Ivan Kalmykov, whose names have become
synonyms for sadism. Bisher describes in detail the Cossacks’ armies,
ever-changing orders of battle, key officers, armored trains,
atrocities against prisoners and civilians, battles against Bolsheviks
and even the Cossacks’ fellow Whites, dirty deals with the Japanese and
conflict with the Americans. It’s the story of a forgotten Russia in
turmoil, when the line between government and organized crime blurred
into a chaotic continuum of kleptocracy, vengeance and sadism.
Bisher really looks to know his stuff, and has put together an excellent website about the Civil War and about his book. The links section, in particular is fantastic, containing several sites that I’d never heard of and the site is, frankly, worth visiting for them alone.
The one drawback, as with most academic books, is the high price. I don’t know about you, but $125 is a bit out of my price range. Hmm, I wonder if I can get my sticky mitts on a review copy…?
- What next?
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