White Guardistn.adj.
/ˌwʌɪt ˈɡɑːdɪst/, U.S. /ˈ(h)waɪt ˈɡɑrdəst/ A. n.
1. A member of a Finnish military organization which opposed left-wing insurgents who had seized power in Finland in 1918.
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1919 New Justice 15 Mar. 8/2 A white terror eclipsing the atrocities of the Finnish white guardists.
2013 R. Knight Voy. Past Cent. vii. 106 His elder brother had been a member of the workers militia many of whose members, after the defeat of the revolution, were executed by the Mannerheim White Guardists.
2. A member of a counter-revolutionary force which opposed the Bolsheviks during the Russian Civil War (1917–22); (in later use) an opponent of the regime during the Soviet era.
ΚΠ
1921 Living Age 21 Mar. 704/1 I spent many months in Russia subsequent to the Bolshevist revolution... I have been imprisoned both by Red guardists and White guardists.
1953 Life 6 Apr. 111/1 Several days later the Soviet newspapers announced that the NKVD had seized and executed 104 terrorists—White Guardists.
1964 V. Nabokov Defence xiii. 211 Yes, yes, I know he's a chess player... But what is he? A reactionary? A White Guardist?
1974 R. H. Stacy Russ. Literary Crit. ix. 228 These were the voices, according to Sholokhov, of the CIA, White Guardists, U.S. senators, and vicious defectors like Stalin's daughter.
2004 Daily Tel. (Nexis) 1 May 17 Lev, as a ‘White Guardist’, faced a long spell in a prison camp or even execution.
B. adj.
Of, relating to, or characteristic of Russian White Guardists or opponents of Soviet communism.
ΚΠ
1920 tr. L. Trotsky in N.Y. Legislative Documents (143rd Sess.) XIII. No. 35. iii. 520 It would be criminal frivolity on our part to disregard the danger represented by the White-Guardist bands of Kolchak on the east.
1927 Times 8 June 12 The Union Government some time ago called the attention of the Polish Government to the activities of White-Guardist terrorists.
1989 C. Barnes Boris Pasternak I. xiv. 401 Gorky..had no wish to compromise himself by assisting an arrantly White-Guardist poetess.
2008 S. S. Montefiore Sashenka ii. xli. 346 The false name under which you masqueraded..when you were really a White Guardist spy.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, March 2015; most recently modified version published online December 2021).
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n.adj.1919