For some reason the
story of Baron Ungern-Sternberg has become very well known in English.
Yet the story of Stanislav Bulak-Balakhovich – who was the
mad Baron's match as an adventurer, and a much more capable soldier to
boot – is almost unknown outside his stomping grounds
of Estonia, Poland and Belorussia.
Over
the years I have assembled various pieces of information on the man,
trying to piece together as much hard military data as I can. Sadly
most of what I have found is in Polish or Russian, and therefore
largely inaccessible to me, but I hope that it is enough his story to
become better known in the English-speaking world.
Bulak-Balachovich
in the RCW
The most accessible introduction in English to this remarkable man is
an article by Richard Spence first published in the journal
Revolutionary Russia. I have been fortunate that he – and his
publishers Taylor and Francis Ltd – have allowed me to
republish his article on Pygmy Wars.
(Keen students of the RCW should make an attempt to track down local
copies of Revolutionary Russia – it has some marvelous
articles. The website for Taylor and Francis is
www.informaworld.com/.)
Bulak-Balachovich
in North-Western Army
The first half of his career was spent fighting with the Estonians and
White Russians on the border of Russia and Estonia. To see some of how
he fits in with the other Whites, there is a set of Orders of Battle in
the
Orbats
section of the site for the
Whites in northwest Russia..
The
Russian Peoples' Volunteer Army and its Belorussian Campaign
While the article Useful Brigand covers Bulak-Balakhovich's escapades
well, it does deal with his largest venture in only a couple of lines.
I therefore hunted down some more information on the NDA's brief attack
on Soviet Russia and wrote it up into a short article, so at least the
outline of the campaign can be followed.
While doing this I found a couple of sources that gave hard numbers for
the NDA army just before the Belorussian campaign.
Sources
Marek
Cabanowski Generał
Stanisław Bułak-Bałachowicz: Zapomniany Bohater
1993, Warsaw
A
full length book about the man
in Polish.
Richard B Spence Boris
Savinkov: Renegade on the Left
1991, East European Monographs,
Boulder
A
book about Balakhovich's
conspirator in the NDA. Worth reading for the other parts of Savinkov's
amazing career in the RCW though, mixing with everyone from Lenin to
Sidney Reilly.
Richard B Spence Useful
brigand: 'Ataman' SN Bulak-Balakhovich, 1917-21
in Revolutionary
Russia, 1998 Issue
11.1
E. A. Khvor’kh Organizatsiya
I boevye
dejstviya russkoj narodnoj dobrovol’cheskoj armii
in Belaya
Gvardiya Al’manakh No. 6.
N. Kakurin and V. Melikov Grashdanskaya
Vojna v
Rossii: Vojna c belopolyakami
2002, AST, Moscow
The
full length Soviet history of
the Russo-Polish War, includes a small section about the NDA campaign.
Oleg Łatyszonek Białoruskie
formacje wojskowe 1917 – 1923
Białystok
1995
Can
be obtained from
http://kamunikat.org/download.php?item=170-1.pdf)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanisław_Bułak-Bałachowicz