clear victory for either side. In 1916, Yudenich successfully carried out an offensive, winning the Battle of Erzurum (1916) and the Trebizond Campaign. In the summer of that year, his forces fought off a Turkish counterattack, culminating in the Battle of Erzincan, which included the presence of Ottoman General Mustafa Kemal. During the battle, Yudenich was awarded the Order of St. George (2nd degree), the final time the decoration was awarded in the Russian Empire. After the February Revolution, Yudenich was appointed commander of the Caucasus Front in 1917, but in May, the Russian Provisional Government removed him from command for insubordination. On direct orders from Alexander Kerensky, he retired from the army. Yudenich then relocated from Tbilisi to Petrograd, where he supported the Kornilov revolt. White Army After the October Revolution of 1917, Yudenich went into hiding from the Bolsheviks and was sheltered by a former sergeant of the Life Guards of Lithuania, who had served with Yudenich from his time in the Pamirs. He managed to escape to exile in Finland in January 1919. In Helsinki, Yudenich joined the "Russian Committee," which had formed in November 1918 to oppose the Bolsheviks, and he was proclaimed as leader of the White movement in northwestern Russia with absolute powers. In the spring of 1919, Yudenich visited Stockholm, where he met with diplomatic representatives of Britain, France, and the United States anfld tried with limited success to obtain assistance in developing a Russian volunteer corps to fight the Bolsheviks. In June 1919, Yudenich made contact with Admiral Aleksandr Kolchak's All-Russian Government based in Omsk, which subsequently acknowledged him as commander-in-chief of all Russian armed forces operating against the Bolsheviks in the Baltic Sea and in northwestern Russia. Kolchak also provided much-needed funds to pay and equip his forces. In June 1919, Yudenich went to Tallinn to meet with General Aleksandr Rodzyanko, the commander of the White Russian Northern Army, attacking Petrograd formally under the Estonian High Command. Yudenich appointed Rodzyanko as his aide. In August 1919, under pressure from the British government, ad hoc to issue a legally-binding guarantee of the independence of his key ally Estonia, Yudenich was forced to create the counterrevolutionary "Regional Government of Northwest Russia," which included monarchists, Socialist-Revolutionaries, and Mensheviks. Yudenich served as Minister of War and spent the next two months organizing and training his army. By September 1919, he had a fairly well-organized army