White Terror

by Jamie Bisher

This is the gripping 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. It tells the tale of how, in the last days of 1917, a fugitive Cossack captain brashly led seven cohorts into a mutinous garrison at Manchuli, a squalid bordertown on Russia's frontier with Manchuria. The garrison had gone Red, revolted against its officers, and become a dangerous, ill-disciplined mob. Nevertheless, Cossack Captain Grigori Semionov cleverly harangued the garrison into laying down its arms and boarding a train that carried it back into the Bolsheviks' tenuous territory. Through such bold action, Semionov and a handful of young Cossack brethren established themselves as the warlords of Eastern Siberia and Russia's Pacific maritime provinces during the next bloody year. Like inland pirates, they menaced the Trans-Siberian Railroad with fleets of armoured trains, Cossack cavalry, mercenaries and pressgang cannon fodder. They undermined Admiral Kolchak's White armies, ruthlessly liquidated all Reds, terrorized the population, sold out to the Japanese, and antagonized the American Expeditionary Force and Czech Legion in a frenzied orchestration of the Russian Empire's gotterdammerung. Historians have long recognized that Ataman Semionov and Company were a nasty lot. This book details precisely how nasty they were.

Genres: Russia, History, Nonfiction, Russian History

488 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 2004

Reviews

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very thorough history book regarding an interesting part of history that does not get a lot of focus.

[Monty Milne · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is history writing at its best. There is a mass of detailed information, with excellent footnotes, and yet it is marshalled so well that we don't feel lost in the forest. The style is both lucid and vivid. The author is not afraid to make some strong judgements, and yet so overwhelming is the evidence presented that I always felt his opinions were just even when they were most condemnatory. For the sad fact is that this is a harrowing tale and a narrative where human evil and folly are laid bare. There are virtually no heroes. Almost all the characters, of all nationalities and political persuasions, are monsters. The few who are not are usually ineffectual, or helpless victims. The White General Kappel is almost the only military leader in the entire book to emerge with an untarnished reputation - though of course he comes to an unpleasant end, like almost everyone else. And as for Ataman Grigory Semenov, the principal character - and villain - of the book...Bisher's scrupulous attempts to record his (few) better traits only show up his innate evil in sharper relief. And yet he seems to have been a symptom, rather than a cause, of a strange kind of mental disorder that descended on the unhappy Russian lands, and inflicted unimaginable suffering on millions of innocent people. When I finished this, I nipped into the village to buy some coffee, and reflected how fortunate I was to be in 21st century England (even though I grumble about it from time to time), and I am not facing a shakedown for my wallet from an unruly mob of White Guards, or being strung from a lamp-post by the Bolsheviks for being a class enemy.

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

A truly excellent book which it seems never got much circulation. Few books on this topic exist in English and no others I have seen go into such detail. Some great stuff here and I would have given it 5 stars especially as not even having a cover I had low expectations if it were not for several sections of rather egregious formatting errors on the electronic version which must have happened in conversion. Happens at least three times, not enough to be a big problem but more than enough to be frustrating.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best English language book about the endgame of the Russian Civil War...

[Tyler Henry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Phenomenal book about the chaos that unfolded during the Russian civil war in Siberia !