This is the first Russian translation of the 1920 war memoir of German Army General Rüdiger von der Goltz (1865-1946). In 1918 he was sent from the Western front of World War I to intervene in the Finnish civil war, aiding the nationalist White Guards against the Reds. With a division under his command, he helped the Whites secure a quick and complete victory in Finland. This was the high-water mark of German success, as Russia, in the chaos of revolution and civil war, had surrendered vast stretches of conquered territory. When its last great Western offensive failed, though, Germany also collapsed into revolution and sued for peace in November. As Bolshevik forces surged westward from Russia into the newly independent Baltic States and Poland, the victorious Entente powers, fearing the spread of communism, allowed German defensive forces to remain in the East. In February 1919 von der Goltz landed in western Latvia into what he called a "witches" cauldron" of contending forces. Heading a corps of local Baltic Germans and nationalist Freikorps volunteer units from Germany, von der Goltz won substantial victories against Red forces; however, he then expanded his defensive mission and strove to carve out a German sphere of influence in the Baltic, in hopes of capturing Petersburg and replacing the Bolshevik regime with a pro-German White Russian government. In this he was thwarted.