Updates
A list of changes and amendments to the site over time. It's for my benefit, not yours.
October 2024
Added a section on White Russians in China and Mongolia. All new material to the site, including a translation Serebrennikov's great book and Ganin's biography of Bakich.
Added a section on Minor Polish battles and units, which has material away from the big battles. The Battle of Woloczyskami is a particular favourite of mine, because the book deals at such a low level.
March 2024
Added a section on tactics and battlefield organisation. Mostly old material, but also including Timanovskiy's "instructions".
Added the translation of The Battle for the Outskirts of Warsaw and tidied up some of the other older stuff in that area and the Orders of Battle.
September 2023
Added a section on the Konarmiya in the Ukraine with Klyuev's book on the 1st Horse Army's campaign, Arczewski on the 18th ID fighting the Konarmia and Biernacki's article on the Battle of Rowne with various potential scenarios.
July 2022
Added a section on the North-Western Theatre.
April 2022
Mamontov's memoirs, which are my favourite memoirs of the war. Quite long and very detailed.
Some Polish material in the Eyewitnesses Section, being a report on the nature of the fighting by Captain Broviewski, and some short episodes from men who served in cavalry units.
January 2022
I got through my wish-list, that was decades old. I translated the interesting portions of Grondij's book (the Siberian part), the first two thirds of Sikorski's book (the fighting bits), a section on the Crimea in 1919, a bunch of Polish orbats and maps, and best of all, some orbats from the 4th Volume of the Directives of the Red Army.
July 2021
I did a major restructure of the site because it was getting too large with too many sub-topic. The decision to add lots of Red Army material tipped me over.
It is now divided into a Red Army section of entirely new material, a White Army section (largely old stuff), a Cossack section (the old Barend's Pages), a Nationalist section (just a few bits and pieces), a Wargaming section (rules, scenarios etc) and a History section (everything except direct wargames stuff, including orders of battle).
April 2021
I added a fair bit of content in the History section.
Early 1918, Makhno, the Drujina thesis on the NorthWest Army, the Defence of Orenburg, some histories of the Semirech'ye.
Also orbats from Kakurin and Melikov, giving the forces in 1920 on the Polish fronts, and some photos of Don Tachankas.
December 2018: Orders of Battle and Maps. The history information on the Ural Cossacks in its own sub-section.
Changes for December 2018
So I decided to rewrite the site in css. I'd done that to my other sites ages ago, but the sheer amount of work put me off. (I started the site long enough ago that only professionals used css.)
While I was at it, I updated all the links – oddly the sites linked to were almost all still live, but an enormous number had changed address.
December 2010
Uniform and flag information for the Urals, Orenburg, Siberian, Semirechensk, TransBaikal, Amur and Ussuri Cossacks.Orders of battle for the Urals and Orenburg Hosts.
Changes for November 2010: Four articles on the Battle of Warsaw.
November 2010: Link to Dimitry Belanovsky added.
November 2010: Four articles about the Battle of Warsaw 1920.
February 2009: Finished my first dash on the Cossack uniforms. Basically all those who fought with the AFSR.
February 2009: Some orders of battle for Orel.
November 2009: Revamp the physical look of the site, with new background colours. Tidy up some of the outdated information while I'm at it.
October 2009: Start to put up the uniform section with Barend. This will take a while to finish properly.
October 2009: Some orders of battle for the Whites and Soviets facing each other in the Crimea in 1920.
June 2008: Even more orders of battle: ones for Iudenich's army and the allied Estonians; one of the Don Army in late 1919 and some stuff on the KOMUCH People's Army.
A page about how to add colour to a White army in the south without resorting to the standard Kornilov, Markov, Drozdovskiy or Alekseev regiments. I also amended the basic uniform page a bit, especially to add some brief notes about elite Red units.
May 2008: I changed the two Baltic maps of Reigo into .gif form, as the .xls form was a bit clunky, and then linked them to the Northern Corps orbat and in the maps section.
April 2008: It was about time for some more material and a "relooking" of the site. I had to deal with the accumulating bits that have nothing to do with the Russian Civil War focus. Now they can be accessed directly by visitors (previously they were basically invisible, including to the search engine spiders. I hope to grow those bits.
The RCW section got 1) a section devoted to Bulak-Balakhovich and the NDA; 2) a section on the fighting near Astrakhan, plus how I might wargame it;3) several orders of battle both related to the above and separate; and 4) some new scenarios donated by Richard Clarke.
The Mexican section got started. Currently just a list of battles, I hope to add some bits soon.
The whole "Miscellaneous" section - contact details etc - got taken out of the Russian Civil War portion. That means I can add things like links to local wargames clubs that will actually be found by the search engine spiders.
15 September 2007: I added the Albov and Stenbock-Fermor memoirs.
Put in a couple of links through to printable flag pages.
Added a couple of new rule sets.
19 June 2007: I added the Kupyansk and Slovechno scenarios.
Boosted storage, since I have passed the previous 50MB limit and added www.pygmywars.com as an address, but left everything else where it was so that all the search engine links would still stay active.
20 April 2007: Have decided to put the site on hold for a while. I'm too busy to do much gaming even, let alone research. I hope to write something about the Basmachis sometime though.
Oh, but I did add this really annoying thing that goes around the cursor (in most browsers, not all).
7 November 2006: I added the Pustomerzha game scenario and details on Nik Cornish's recent book on the WWI Russian army.
1 November 2006: I corrected a few more typo errors in my army lists.
4 September 2006: A section of stuff from my August trip to Poland added.
29 May–31 May 2006: A complete rejig of the site. Not much stuff taken out, but many pages rewritten or changed from html to pdf or vice versa. The 2nd half of the Moslard article added, along with Study of the Red Cavalry and Farman's account of Polish Cavalry. A section on information for uniforms added and one on potentially confusing terms.
25 May 2006: Details added about Tom Hillman's books.
1 May 2006: Added the Rauna scenario and updated the "books" and "rules" pages.
21 April 2006: "The Lost Legion" added, with profuse thanks to Steve Turn for supplying the photocopy.
28 February 2006: Pygmy Wars army lists added.
27 February 2006: An orbats page added, mostly linking old stuff, but addding a Polish War 1920 orbat as well.
February 2006: Extra cards for the Red Actions! rules added, with explanations. If you game the RCW and haven't tried Red Actions! them, you should. The rest of the Captain's stuff is worth a look too
February 2006: a few books added to the reading list. The Triumph of the Will ruleset added to the Rules page.
9 January 2006: A couple of extra books added to the main Poland 1919 page and amendments made to my introduction to Przybylski's work, after some comments kindly provided by Henryk Szot.
2 January 2006: A section on the Polish campaigns against Russia and the West Ukraine in 1919.
December 2005: Expanded the "figures used" section to take account of the new PP Freikorps figures and the fact that I have finished a few more units since the time I first wrote it.
December 2005: Noted the free software I used, and a thanks to my wife for finding it, in the site introduction.
September 2005: Added Bujac's account of the Hungarian Soviet War vs Romania. Added the Borkowo scenarios.
August 2005: Was able to scan the Kennedy article, thanks to Nik Cornish. The Orel campaign map was added, thanks to Martin James. More bits were added to the Latvia 1919 pages, thanks to Reigo Rosenthal.
June 2005: Michael Lofthouse supplied a couple of links, most especially an excellent article on the Basmachis at http://cgsc.leavenworth.army.mil/carl/resources/csi/csi.asp (Leavenworth Paper 20, Chapter 3) and a nice site for buying maps of Poland http://www.polandbymail.com/.
June 2005: I got the Freikorps in Latvia stuff up. Thanks to Eduardo, Valdis, Daniel and especially Reigo. I got the Czesniki article and scenario out.
May 2005: Finally off the ground and running, thanks largely to Alison (my wife) coming through with the requisite software.