page_title: White movement
section_title: White Army
hierarchical_section_title: White movement / Structure and ideology / Structure / White Army
caption_attribution_description: English: Flag bearer and honor guard of Kornilov's Shock Detachment, a part of the 8th Army (Russian Empire). World War I, Eastern Front, 1917. Русский: Знаменосец и почётный караул Корниловского ударного отряда.
context_page_description: The White movement and its military arm the White Army, also known as the White Guard, the White Guardsmen or simply the Whites, was a loose confederation of anti-communist forces that fought the communist Bolsheviks, also known as the Reds, in the Russian Civil War and that to a lesser extent continued operating as militarized associations of insurrectionists both outside and within Russian borders in Siberia until roughly World War II.
  During the Russian Civil War the White movement functioned as a big-tent political movement representing an array of political opinions in Russia united in their opposition to the communist Bolsheviks - from the republican-minded liberals and Kerenskyite social-democrats on the left through imperialist supporters of a united multinational Russia to the ultra-nationalist Black Hundreds on the right.
context_section_description: The Volunteer Army in South Russia became the most prominent and the largest of the various and disparate White forces. Starting off as a small and well-organized military in January 1918, the Volunteer Army soon grew. The Kuban Cossacks joined the White Army and conscription of both peasants and Cossacks began. In late February 1918, 4,000 soldiers under the command of General Aleksei Kaledin were forced to retreat from Rostov-on-Don due to the advance of the Red Army. In what became known as the Ice March, they traveled to Kuban in order to unite with the Kuban Cossacks, most of whom did not support the Volunteer Army. In March, 3,000 men under the command of General Viktor Pokrovsky joined the Volunteer Army, increasing its membership to 6,000, and by June to 9,000. In 1919 the Don Cossacks joined the Army. In that year between May and October, the Volunteer Army grew from 64,000 to 150,000 soldiers and was better supplied than its Red counterpart. The White Army's rank-and-file comprised active anti-Bolsheviks, such as Cossacks, nobles, and peasants, as conscripts and as volunteers.
  The White movement had access to various naval forces, both seagoing and riverine, especially the Black Sea Fleet.
  Aerial forces available to the Whites included the Slavo-British Aviation Corps (S.B.A.C.). The Russian ace Alexander Kazakov operated within this unit.
caption: Kornilov's Shock Detachment (8th Army), later became the Volunteer Army's elite Shock Regiment
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