Evacuation of the Crimea (1920)

The Evacuation of the Crimea (November 13-16, 1920) was an event in the Russian Civil War in November 1920, in which White forces evacuated over sea the Crimean Peninsula, their last stronghold on the Southern Front, bringing an end to the fighting on that Front.


The Evacuation

By the end of October 1920, the White Army had been driven out of Southern Russia and Ukraine, and only held the Crimean Peninsula, defended behind the narrow Perekop Isthmus. When this last defensive line was breached by the Red Army during the Siege of Perekop (1920), the commander of the White Army, Pyotr Wrangel, decided to evacuate. The operation had been preliminarily worked out and planned by General Wrangel's staff, so its implementation was carried out in good order. During the evacuation from the ports of the Crimean peninsula (Sevastopol, Yevpatoria, Kerch, Feodosia, Yalta) a total of 145,693 soldiers and civilians, not counting the crews, were taken on board on 126 ships and "sudenosheks" (small boats and tugs).

This fleet, known as Wrangel's fleet, and composed of ships of the Whites' Black Sea fleet, foreign ships and the temporarily mobilized ships of the Voluntary Fleet, first sailed to the Entente occupied Constantinople. A significant part of the passengers left the ships here, replenishing the ranks of White Russian emigrates. Between December 8, 1920 and February 1921, the reduced flotilla sailed to the Tunisian port of Bizerte.

The soldiers and civilians who were left behind in the Crimea, suffered under the Red Terror organised by Béla Kun and Rosalia Zemlyachka.
The estimated number of executions vary from minimum 12,000 over 50,000 to 120,000.

Several rare photographs of the moment of evacuation in Sevastopol and Yalta have been preserved. The Crimean Evacuation is also shown in Soviet feature films "Two Comrades Were Serving" (1968) and "The Flight" (1970), and also in the 2014 film "Sunstroke" .

Pictures

Scenes of evacuation in the ports
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Out to sea

Sources


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