Don Army
On the eve of the February Revolution, Novocherkassk had a population of about sixty thousand people, about twenty-five thousand of whom were serving Cossacks and their families, three thousand were noblemen, and about five hundred were clergymen. Novocherkassk, unlike many Russian cities at the time, had almost no permanent merchants or peasants. During the Russian Civil War from 1917 to 1922, Novocherkassk was the center of the Don Army counter-revolution and came under the command of General Alexey Kaledin. The Red Army eventually defeated ousted the White-aligned Don Army from Novocherkassk on January 7, 1920.