My Father’s Ice March with Viktor Pokrovskii and his Cossaks

Abstract

When one thinks of the Ice March [Ledjanoj pohod], one naturally thinks of the Volunteer Army that left Rostov on 9 February 1918 under the command of General Lavr Kornilov to conquer Ekaterinodar. However, the decisive role played from Ekaterinodar by Victor Pokrovskij at the head of the Kuban army, which inflicted heavy defeats on the Bolsheviks as early as January 1918, is too often ignored.

In his writings, my father, Nikolaj von Buhrmeister, an artillery officer of the Guard, tells how he left the front and reached Ekaterinodar at the end of December 1917, with two comrades from his brigade. They enlisted in the volunteer corps that Viktor Pokrovskij formed under the aegis of Kuban’s Rada. With their artillery, they took part in the first victories over the Bolsheviks, but soon the balance of power made it impossible to defend Ekaterinodar. Once the cannons were drowned, the artillerymen formed the escort of Pokrovskij, commander of the Kuban army, in its retreat to the mountains. After constant fighting, it joined up with Kornilov's Volunteers Army. After Kornilov's death and the failure in front of Ekaterinodar, Pokrovskij's cavalry provided cover for this army retreating towards the Don and grew as the Cossack recruitment increased under his leadership. My father vividly describes the episodes of this epic, unusual for a former student of the Page Corps.