In the eyes of many contemporaries and historians of the Russian Civil War, the White movement was an aff air for the former imperial elite who did not understand or accept the Revolution. The Whites wanted to return the past to Russia. Th is was underscored by the lofty image of the “White holy warrior” that emerged in the work of Russian poets in the early 20th century, and by work on the totally unpoetic White “counter-revolution”, the focus of Soviet historians. But what did the White government really aspire to? How did the Whites govern the territory they controlled and mobilize their army? What did Russians think of the White government and the expeditionary army of the Triple Entente, which acted in support of the Whites? And why did residents of far-flung Russian provinces often fi ght with the Whites against the Bolsheviks?

Lyudmila Novikova’s book, a history of the anti-Bolshevik Northern Region, is an attempt to answer these questions. Based on materials from Russian and foreign archives, the book focuses on the political paradoxes of the White movement as well as the provincial context of the White struggle, which to a large part determined the course and outcome of the Russian Civil War.