Summary of the Russian Civil War

Russia’s October Revolution of 1917 produced a civil war between the Bolshevik government – who had just seized power - and a number of rebel armies. This civil war is often said to have started in 1918, but bitter fighting began in 1917. Although most of the war was over by 1920, it took until 1922 for the Bolsheviks, who held the industrial heartland of Russia from the start, to crush all opposition.

Origins of the War: Reds and Whites Form

In 1917, after a second revolution in one year, the socialist Bolsheviks had seized command of Russia’s political heart.

They dismissed the elected Constitutional Assembly at gunpoint and banned opposition politics; it was clear they wanted a dictatorship. However, there was still stiff opposition to the Bolsheviks, not least of which from the right wing faction in the army; this began to form a unit of volunteers from hardcore anti-Bolsheviks in the Kuban Steppes. By June 1918 this force had survived great difficulties from the infamous Russian winter, fighting the ‘First Kuban Campaign’ or the ‘Ice March’, a near continuous battle and movement against the Reds that lasted over fifty days and saw their commander Kornilov (who may have attempted a coup in 1917) killed. They now came under the command of General Denikin. They became known as the ‘Whites’ in contrast to the Bolshveik’s ‘Red Army’. On the news of Kornilov’s death, Lenin announced “It can be said with certainty that, in the main, the civil war has ended.” (Mawdsley, The Russian Civil War, p. 22) He could not have been more wrong.
Areas on the outskirts of the Russian empire took advantage of the chaos to declare independence and in 1918 almost the whole periphery of Russia was lost to the Bolsheviks by localised military revolts.

The Bolsheviks stimulated further opposition when they signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany. Although the Bolsheviks had gained some of their support by pledging to end the war, the terms of the peace treaty – which gave substantial land to Germany – caused those on the left wing who remained non-Bolshevik to split away. The Bolsheviks responded by expelling them from the soviets, and then targeted them with a secret police force. In addition, Lenin wanted a brutal civil war so he could sweep away the substantial opposition in one bloodletting. That Bolshevik policy made civil war inevitable, they he didn’t try to compromise, was to plan.

Further military opposition to the Bolsheviks also emerged from foreign forces. The Western powers in World War 1 were still fighting the conflict and hoped to restart the eastern front in order to draw German forces away from the west, or even just stop the weak soviet government allowing Germans free reign in the newly conquered Russian land. Later, the allies acted to try and secure the return of nationalized foreign investments and defend the new allies they’d made. Among those campaigning for a war effort was Winston Churchill. To do this the British, French and US landed a small expeditionary force at Murmansk and Archangel.

In addition to these factions, the 40,000 strong Czechoslovak Legion, which had been fighting against Germany and Austria-Hungary for independence, was given permission to leave Russia via the eastern fringe of the former empire. However, when the Red Army ordered them to disarm after a brawl, the Legion resisted and seized control of local facilities including the vital Trans-Siberian Railway. The dates of these attacks – May 25th 1918 – are often incorrectly called the start of the Civil War, but the Czech legion did swiftly take a large territory, especially when compared to the armies in World War 1, thanks to seizing almost the entire railway and with it access to vast areas of Russia. The Czechs decided to ally with anti-Bolshevik forces in the hope of fighting against Germany again. Anti-Bolshevik forces took advantage of the chaos to coalesce here and new White armies emerged.

The Nature of the Reds and Whites

The ‘Reds’ - the Bolshevik dominated Red Army, which was hastily formed in 1918 - were clustered around the capital. Operating under the leadership of Lenin and Trotsky, they had a uniform agenda, albeit one that as the war continued. They were fighting to retain control, and keep Russia together. Trotsky and Bonch-Bruevich (a vital ex-Tsarist commander) pragmatically organised them along traditional military lines and used Tsarist officers, despite socialist complaints. The Tsar’s former elite joined in droves because, with their pensions cancelled, they had little choice. Equally crucially, the Reds had access to the hub of the rail network and could move troops around quickly, and controlled the key supply regions for both men and material. With sixty million people, the Reds could muster greater numbers than their rivals. The Bolsheviks worked with other socialist groups like the Mensheviks and SRs when they needed to, and turned against them when the chance was there. As a result, by the end of the civil war the Reds were almost entirely Bolshevik.
On the other hand, the Whites were far from being a unified force. They were, in practice, comprised of ad hoc groups opposed to both the Bolsheviks, and sometimes each other, and were outnumbered and overstretched thanks to controlling a smaller population over a huge area. Consequently they failed to pull together in a unified front, and were forced to operate independently. The Bolsheviks saw the war as a struggle between their workers and Russia’s upper and middle classes, and as a war of socialism against international capitalism. The Whites were loath to recognise land reforms, so didn’t convert the peasants to their cause, and were loath to recognise nationalist movements, so largely lost their support. The Whites were rooted in the old Tsarist and monarchical regime, while Russia’s masses had moved on.

There were also the ‘Greens’. These were forces fighting, not for the reds of the whites, but after their own goals, like national independence – neither the Reds or Whites recognised breakaway regions - or for food and booty. There were also the ‘Blacks’, the Anarchists.