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| Battle of Petrograd | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of the Russian Civil War, Allied Intervention in the Russian Civil War, Estonian War of Independence and Heimosodat | |||||||||
 A picture of a Young Bolshevik soldier in Petrograd | |||||||||
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| Belligerents | |||||||||
 Northwest Russia Estonia  British Empire  Ingria Finland |
 Soviet Russia | ||||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||||
|
Nikolai Yudenich |
Leon Trotsky | ||||||||
| Units involved | |||||||||
 Northwest Army | |||||||||
| Strength | |||||||||
|
18,500 6,000 around 2,000 British Baltic Fleet |
55,500 | ||||||||
The Battle of Petrograd was a campaign by the White movement to take the city of Petrograd (at various times called Saint Petersburg, Petrograd, and Leningrad; now Saint Petersburg). The city held significant value, notably as it was the same city that the October Revolution took place in. The battle was also at a critical point in the Civil War as the Whites had also been getting closer to Moscow and the Russian State was at its peak.
Using the new Regional Government of Northwest Russia as a base, the newly formed Northwestern Army had launched an attack from Pskov and drove north to Petrograd. The White Army saw a string of victories on the road to Petrograd. After the White advance severed a railroad junction from Moscow to Petrograd, the Bolsheviks began to fear the city might soon fall. Trotsky personally went north to rally the city's defenses, he oversaw the utilization of an alternative rail line to bring in supplies from Moscow needed to fend off the attack.
The advance stalled and reversed, soon the Whites were forced to retreat into Estonia. Hoping to secure a peace deal with Soviet Russia, the Estonian government refused to allow the Northwestern Army to be restationed in the nation. The White cause had begun to disintegrate across Russia however. Though the Northwestern Army was soon allowed to send pockets of units into Estonia, the new government of the Russian State collapsed; simultaneously the army disbanded, ending any chance of Petrograd, the historic capital of Russia, being taken from the Bolsheviks.