The Northern Caucasus Operation was fought between the White and Red Armies during the Russian Civil War between December 1918 and March 1919.

In summer and autumn 1918, the Red Army had been defeated in the Second Kuban Campaign and Ekaterinodar, Novorossiysk, Maykop, Armavir and Stavropol were lost.

It was joined by the weak 12th Red Army which held the front line from Grozny over Kizlyar to the Terechnoye station, which ran west–east.

On December 8, 1918, both of these armies became part of a separate Caspian-Caucasian Front under command of Mikhail Svechnikov.

The Red Army, already badly organized and poorly disciplined, had also been decimated by a typhus epidemic.