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Russian Civil War

February 09, 2023

For other uses, see Russian Civil War (disambiguation).

The Russian Civil War (Russian: Гражданская война в России, tr. Grazhdanskaya voyna v Rossii; 7 November 1917 — 16 June 1923)[1] was a multi-party civil war in the former Russian Empire sparked by the overthrowing of the monarchy and the new republican government's failure to maintain stability, as many factions vied to determine Russia's political future. It resulted in the formation of the RSFSR and later the Soviet Union in most of its territory. Its finale marked the end of the Russian Revolution, which was one of the key events of the 20th century.

Russian Civil War
Part of the Russian Revolution and the aftermath of World War I

Clockwise from top left:
Date7 November 1917 – 16 June 1923[k][1]: 3, 230 [2]
(5 years, 7 months and 9 days)
Peace treaties
Location
Former Russian Empire, Galicia, Mongolia, Tuva, Persia
Result

Bolshevik victory:

Territorial
changes
Cessions to Bolshevik states
Cessions to other nations
Belligerents
Also:
Also:
Also:
Also:
Collaborators:
Commanders and leaders
Vladimir Lenin
Leon Trotsky
Jukums Vācietis
Yakov Sverdlov
S. Kamenev
N. Podvoisky
Joseph Stalin
Y. Medvedev
Vilhelm Knorin
A. Krasnoshchyokov		 A. Kerensky 
Alexander Kolchak 
Lavr Kornilov †
Anton Denikin
Pyotr Wrangel
Nikolai Yudenich
Grigory Semyonov
Yevgeny Miller
Pyotr Krasnov
R. von Ungern 		 Józef Piłsudski
C.G.E. Mannerheim
Symon Petliura
Konstantin Päts
Jānis Čakste
Antanas Smetona
S. Tikhonov
Noe Zhordania
A. Khatisian
Nasib Yusifbeyli
Vladimir Volsky
Maria Spiridonova
Nykyfor Hryhoriv †
Nestor Makhno
Stepan Petrichenko
…and others		 Otani Kikuzo
Edmund Ironside
William S. Graves
Radola Gajda
Maurice Janin
…and others		 H. von Eichhorn †
Nuri Pasha
Jan Sierada
Pavlo Skoropadskyi
P. Bermondt-Avalov
…and others
Strength
Local forces:
Also:
Also:
Also:
Casualties and losses
  • 13,000 killed
  • 6,500 killed
  • 938+ killed[10]
  • 596 killed
  • 350 killed
  • 179 killed
  • ~250,000
  • 57,000 killed
  • 113,000 wounded
  • 50,000 POWs
  • ~125,000
  • 15,000 killed
  • ~5,000
  • 3,500 killed
  • 1,650 executed/dead
  • 3,888 killed
  • 3,046 killed
  • 1,444 killed[11]
  • 55 killed
  • 500 killed

7,000,000–12,000,000 total casualties, including
civilians and non-combatants

1–2 million refugees outside Russia

The Russian monarchy had been overthrown by the 1917 February Revolution, and Russia was in a state of political flux. A tense summer culminated in the Bolshevik-led October Revolution, overthrowing the Provisional Government of the Russian Republic. Bolshevik rule was not universally accepted, and the country descended into civil war. The two largest combatants were the Red Army, fighting for the Bolshevik form of socialism led by Vladimir Lenin, and the loosely allied forces known as the White Army, which included diverse interests favouring political monarchism, capitalism and social democracy, each with democratic and anti-democratic variants. In addition, rival militant socialists, notably the Ukrainian anarchists of the Makhnovshchina and Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, were involved in conflict against the Bolsheviks. They, as well as non-ideological green armies, opposed the Bolsheviks, the Whites and the foreign interventionists.[12] Thirteen foreign nations intervened against the Red Army, notably the Allied intervention whose primary goal was re-establishing the Eastern Front. Three foreign nations of the Central Powers also intervened, rivaling the Allied intervention with the main goal of retaining the territory they had received in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.

The Bolsheviks initially consolidated control over most of the empire. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was an emergency peace with the German Empire, who had captured vast swathes of the Russian Empire during the chaos of the revolution. In May 1918, the Czechoslovak Legion in Russia revolted in Siberia. In reaction, the Allies began their North Russian and Siberian interventions. That, combined with the creation of the Provisional All-Russian Government, saw the reduction of Bolshevik-controlled territory to most of European Russia and parts of Central Asia. In November, Alexander Kolchak launched a coup to take control of the Russian State, establishing a de facto military dictatorship.

In 1919, the White Army launched several attacks from the east in March, the south in July, and west in October. The advances were later checked by the Eastern Front counteroffensive, the Southern Front counteroffensive, and the defeat of the Northwestern Army. The White Movement also suffered greater losses after the Allies pulled back from northern and southern Russia. With the main base of the RSFSR secured, the Bolsheviks could now strike back, with a solid defensive position.

The armies under Kolchak were eventually forced on a mass retreat eastward. Bolshevik forces advanced east, despite encountering resistance in Chita, Yakut and Mongolia. Soon the Red Army split the Don and Volunteer armies, forcing evacuations in Novorossiysk in March and the Crimea in November 1920. After that, anti-Bolshevik resistance was sporadic for several years until the collapse of the White Army in Yakutia in June 1923, but continued on in Central Asia and Khabarovsk Krai until 1934. There were an estimated 7 to 12 million casualties during the war, mostly civilians.[1]: 287 

Many pro-independence movements emerged after the break-up of the Russian Empire and fought in the war.[3]: 7  Several parts of the former Russian Empire—Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland—were established as sovereign states, with their own civil wars and wars of independence. The rest of the former Russian Empire was consolidated into the Soviet Union shortly afterwards.[13]

Background

World War I

Main article: World War I

The Russian Empire fought in World War I from 1914 alongside France and the United Kingdom (Triple Entente) against Germany, Austria-Hungary and later the Ottoman Empire (Central Powers).

February Revolution

Main article: February Revolution

The February Revolution of 1917 resulted in the abdication of Nicholas II of Russia. As a result, the Russian Provisional Government was established, and soviets, elected councils of workers, soldiers, and peasants, were organized throughout the country, leading to a situation of dual power. Russia was proclaimed a republic in September of the same year.

October Revolution

Main article: October Revolution

The Provisional Government, led by Socialist Revolutionary Party politician Alexander Kerensky, was unable to solve the most pressing issues of the country, most importantly to end the war with the Central Powers. A failed military coup by General Lavr Kornilov in September 1917 led to a surge in support for the Bolshevik party, who gained majorities in the soviets, which until then had been controlled by the Socialist Revolutionaries. Promising an end to the war and "all power to the Soviets", the Bolsheviks then ended dual power by suppressing the Provisional Government in late October, on the eve of the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets, in what would be the second Revolution of 1917. Despite the Bolsheviks' seizure of power, they lost to the Socialist Revolutionary Party in the 1917 Russian Constituent Assembly election, and the Constituent Assembly was dissolved by the Bolsheviks. The Bolsheviks soon lost the support of other far-left allies such as the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries after their acceptance of the terms of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk presented by Germany.[14]

Formation of the Red Army

Main article: Red Army

From mid-1917 onwards, the Russian Army, the successor-organisation of the old Imperial Russian Army, started to disintegrate;[15] the Bolsheviks used the volunteer-based Red Guards as their main military force, augmented by an armed military component of the Cheka (the Bolshevik state security apparatus). In January 1918, after significant Bolshevik reverses in combat, the future People's Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs, Leon Trotsky headed the reorganization of the Red Guards into a Workers' and Peasants' Red Army in order to create a more effective fighting force. The Bolsheviks appointed political commissars to each unit of the Red Army to maintain morale and to ensure loyalty.

In June 1918, when it had become apparent that a revolutionary army composed solely of workers would not suffice, Trotsky instituted mandatory conscription of the rural peasantry into the Red Army.[16] The Bolsheviks overcame opposition of rural Russians to Red Army conscription units by taking hostages and shooting them when necessary in order to force compliance.[17] The forced conscription drive had mixed results, successfully creating a larger army than the Whites, but with members indifferent towards Marxist–Leninist ideology.[14]

The Red Army also utilized former Tsarist officers as "military specialists" (voenspetsy);[18] sometimes their families were taken hostage in order to ensure their loyalty.[19] At the start of the civil war, former Tsarist officers formed three-quarters of the Red Army officer-corps.[19] By its end, 83% of all Red Army divisional and corps commanders were ex-Tsarist soldiers.[18]

Anti-Bolshevik movement

Main articles: White movement, Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine, Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War, Pro-independence movements in the Russian Civil War, and Left-wing uprisings against the Bolsheviks
 
Admiral Alexander Kolchak (seated) and General Alfred Knox (behind Kolchak) observing military exercise, 1919

While resistance to the Red Guards began on the very day after the Bolshevik uprising, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and the instinct of one-party rule became a catalyst[20] for the formation of anti-Bolshevik groups both inside and outside Russia, pushing them into action against the new Soviet government.

A loose confederation of anti-Bolshevik forces aligned against the Communist government, including landowners, republicans, conservatives, middle-class citizens, reactionaries, pro-monarchists, liberals, army generals, non-Bolshevik socialists who still had grievances and democratic reformists voluntarily united only in their opposition to Bolshevik rule. Their military forces, bolstered by forced conscriptions and terror[21] as well as foreign influence, under the leadership of General Nikolai Yudenich, Admiral Alexander Kolchak and General Anton Denikin, became known as the White movement (sometimes referred to as the "White Army") and controlled significant parts of the former Russian Empire for most of the war.

A Ukrainian nationalist movement was active in Ukraine during the war. More significant was the emergence of an anarchist political and military movement known as the Makhnovshchina, led by Nestor Makhno. The Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine, which counted numerous Jews and Ukrainian peasants in its ranks, played a key part in halting Denikin's White Army offensive towards Moscow during 1919, later ejecting White forces from Crimea.

The remoteness of the Volga Region, the Ural Region, Siberia and the Far East was favorable for the anti-Bolshevik forces, and the Whites set up a number of organizations in the cities of those regions. Some of the military forces were set up on the basis of clandestine officers organizations in the cities.

The Czechoslovak Legions had been part of the Russian Army and numbered around 30,000 troops by October 1917. They had an agreement with the new Bolshevik government to be evacuated from the Eastern Front via the port of Vladivostok to France. The transport from the Eastern Front to Vladivostok slowed down in the chaos, and the troops became dispersed all along the Trans-Siberian Railway. Under pressure from the Central Powers, Trotsky ordered the disarming and arrest of the legionaries, which created tensions with the Bolsheviks.

The Western Allies armed and supported opponents of the Bolsheviks. They were worried about a possible Russo-German alliance, the prospect of the Bolsheviks making good on their threats to default on Imperial Russia's massive foreign loans and the possibility that Communist revolutionary ideas would spread (a concern shared by many Central Powers). Hence, many of the countries expressed their support for the Whites, including the provision of troops and supplies. Winston Churchill declared that Bolshevism must be "strangled in its cradle".[22] The British and French had supported Russia during World War I on a massive scale with war materials.

Allied intervention

Main article: Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War

After the treaty, it looked like much of that material would fall into the hands of the Germans. To meet that danger, the Allies intervened with Great Britain and France sending troops into Russian ports. There were violent clashes with the Bolsheviks. Britain intervened in support of the White forces to defeat the Bolsheviks and prevent the spread of communism across Europe.[23]

Buffer states

The German Empire created several short-lived satellite buffer states within its sphere of influence after the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk: the United Baltic Duchy, Duchy of Courland and Semigallia, Kingdom of Lithuania, Kingdom of Poland,[24] the Belarusian People's Republic, and the Ukrainian State. Following Germany's Armistice in World War I in November 1918, the states were abolished.[25][26]

Finland was the first republic that declared its independence from Russia in December 1917 and established itself in the ensuing Finnish Civil War from January–May 1918.[27] The Second Polish Republic, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia formed their own armies immediately after the abolition of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty and the start of the Soviet westward offensive in November 1918.[28]

Geography and chronology

Main articles: Southern Front of the Russian Civil War, North Russia Campaign, Eastern Front of the Russian Civil War, Yakut Revolt, and Finnish Civil War

In the European part of Russia the war was fought across three main fronts: the eastern, the southern and the northwestern. It can also be roughly split into the following periods.

 
Anti-Bolshevik Volunteer Army in South Russia, January 1918

The first period lasted from the Revolution until the Armistice. Already on the date of the Revolution, Cossack General Alexey Kaledin refused to recognize it and assumed full governmental authority in the Don region,[29] where the Volunteer Army began amassing support. The signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk also resulted in direct Allied intervention in Russia and the arming of military forces opposed to the Bolshevik government. There were also many German commanders who offered support against the Bolsheviks, fearing a confrontation with them was impending as well.

During the first period, the Bolsheviks took control of Central Asia out of the hands of the Provisional Government and White Army, setting up a base for the Communist Party in the Steppe and Turkestan, where nearly two million Russian settlers were located.[30]

 
Russian soldiers of the anti-Bolshevik Siberian Army in 1919

Most of the fighting in the first period was sporadic, involved only small groups and had a fluid and rapidly-shifting strategic situation. Among the antagonists were the Czechoslovak Legion,[31] the Poles of the 4th and 5th Rifle Divisions and the pro-Bolshevik Red Latvian riflemen.

The second period of the war lasted from January to November 1919. At first the White armies' advances from the south (under Denikin), the east (under Kolchak) and the northwest (under Yudenich) were successful, forcing the Red Army and its allies back on all three fronts. In July 1919 the Red Army suffered another reverse after a mass defection of units in the Crimea to the anarchist Insurgent Army under Nestor Makhno, enabling anarchist forces to consolidate power in Ukraine. Leon Trotsky soon reformed the Red Army, concluding the first of two military alliances with the anarchists. In June the Red Army first checked Kolchak's advance. After a series of engagements, assisted by an Insurgent Army offensive against White supply lines, the Red Army defeated Denikin's and Yudenich's armies in October and November.

The third period of the war was the extended siege of the last White forces in the Crimea. General Wrangel had gathered the remnants of Denikin's armies, occupying much of the Crimea. An attempted invasion of southern Ukraine was rebuffed by the Insurgent Army under Makhno's command. Pursued into Crimea by Makhno's troops, Wrangel went over to the defensive in the Crimea. After an abortive move north against the Red Army, Wrangel's troops were forced south by Red Army and Insurgent Army forces; Wrangel and the remains of his army were evacuated to Constantinople in November 1920.

Warfare

October Revolution

Main article: October Revolution
 
European theatre of the Russian Civil War

In the October Revolution, the Bolshevik Party directed the Red Guard (armed groups of workers and Imperial army deserters) to seize control of Petrograd (Saint Petersburg) and immediately began the armed takeover of cities and villages throughout the former Russian Empire. In January 1918 the Bolsheviks dissolved the Russian Constituent Assembly and proclaimed the Soviets (workers' councils) as the new government of Russia.

Initial anti-Bolshevik uprisings

Main articles: Kerensky-Krasnov uprising, Junker mutiny, and Volunteer Army

The first attempt to regain power from the Bolsheviks was made by the Kerensky-Krasnov uprising in October 1917. It was supported by the Junker Mutiny in Petrograd but was quickly put down by the Red Guard, notably including the Latvian Rifle Division.

The initial groups that fought against the Communists were local Cossack armies that had declared their loyalty to the Provisional Government. Kaledin of the Don Cossacks and General Grigory Semenov of the Siberian Cossacks were prominent among them. The leading Tsarist officers of the Imperial Russian Army also started to resist. In November, General Mikhail Alekseev, the Tsar's Chief of Staff during the First World War, began to organize the Volunteer Army in Novocherkassk. Volunteers of the small army were mostly officers of the old Russian army, military cadets and students. In December 1917, Alekseev was joined by General Lavr Kornilov, Denikin and other Tsarist officers who had escaped from the jail, where they had been imprisoned following the abortive Kornilov affair just before the Revolution.[1]: 27  On 9 December, the Military Revolutionary Committee in Rostov rebelled, with the Bolsheviks controlling the city for five days until the Alekseev Organization supported Kaledin in recapturing the city. According to Peter Kenez, "The operation, begun on December 9, can be regarded as the beginning of the Civil War."[32]

Having stated in the November 1917 "Declaration of Rights of Nations of Russia" that any nation under imperial Russian rule should be immediately given the power of self-determination, the Bolsheviks had begun to usurp the power of the Provisional Government in the territories of Central Asia soon after the establishment of the Turkestan Committee in Tashkent.[33] In April 1917 the Provisional Government set up the committee, which was mostly made up of former Tsarist officials.[34] The Bolsheviks attempted to take control of the Committee in Tashkent on 12 September 1917 but it was unsuccessful, and many leaders were arrested. However, because the Committee lacked representation of the native population and poor Russian settlers, they had to release the Bolshevik prisoners almost immediately because of a public outcry, and a successful takeover of that government body took place two months later in November.[35] The Leagues of Mohammedam Working People, which Russian settlers and natives who had been sent to work behind the lines for the Tsarist government in 1916 formed in March 1917, had led numerous strikes in the industrial centers throughout September 1917.[36] However, after the Bolshevik destruction of the Provisional Government in Tashkent, Muslim elites formed an autonomous government in Turkestan, commonly called the "Kokand autonomy" (or simply Kokand).[37] The White Russians supported that government body, which lasted several months because of Bolshevik troop isolation from Moscow.[38] In January 1918 the Soviet forces, under Lt. Col. Muravyov, invaded Ukraine and invested Kiev, where the Central Council of the Ukrainian People's Republic held power. With the help of the Kiev Arsenal Uprising, the Bolsheviks captured the city on 26 January.[1]: 35 

Peace with the Central Powers

Main article: Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
 
Soviet delegation with Trotsky greeted by German officers at Brest-Litovsk, 8 January 1918

The Bolsheviks decided to immediately make peace with the Central Powers, as they had promised the Russian people before the Revolution.[39] Vladimir Lenin's political enemies attributed that decision to his sponsorship by the Foreign Office of Wilhelm II, German Emperor, offered to Lenin in hope that, with a revolution, Russia would withdraw from World War I. That suspicion was bolstered by the German Foreign Ministry's sponsorship of Lenin's return to Petrograd.[40] However, after the military fiasco of the summer offensive (June 1917) by the Russian Provisional Government had devastated the structure of the Russian Army, it became crucial that Lenin realize the promised peace.[41] Even before the failed summer offensive the Russian population was very skeptical about the continuation of the war. Western socialists had promptly arrived from France and from the UK to convince the Russians to continue the fight, but could not change the new pacifist mood of Russia.[42]

On 16 December 1917 an armistice was signed between Russia and the Central Powers in Brest-Litovsk and peace talks began.[1]: 42  As a condition for peace, the proposed treaty by the Central Powers conceded huge portions of the former Russian Empire to the German Empire and the Ottoman Empire, greatly upsetting nationalists and conservatives. Leon Trotsky, representing the Bolsheviks, refused at first to sign the treaty while continuing to observe a unilateral cease-fire, following the policy of "No war, no peace".[43]

Therefore, on 18 February 1918, the Germans began Operation Faustschlag on the Eastern Front, encountering virtually no resistance in a campaign that lasted 11 days.[43] Signing a formal peace treaty was the only option in the eyes of the Bolsheviks because the Russian Army was demobilized, and the newly formed Red Guard could not stop the advance. They also understood that the impending counterrevolutionary resistance was more dangerous than the concessions of the treaty, which Lenin viewed as temporary in the light of aspirations for a world revolution. The Soviets acceded to a peace treaty, and the formal agreement, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, was ratified on 3 March. The Soviets viewed the treaty as merely a necessary and expedient means to end the war.

Ukraine, South Russia, and Caucasus (1918)

Main articles: Ukrainian People's Republic, Kiev Arsenal January Uprising, Ice March, 26 Baku Commissars, German Caucasus Expedition, Battle of Baku, Central Caspian Dictatorship, and Romanian military intervention in Bessarabia
 
February 1918 article from The New York Times showing a map of the Russian Imperial territories claimed by the Ukrainian People's Republic at the time, before the annexation of the Austro-Hungarian lands of the West Ukrainian People's Republic

In Ukraine the German-Austrian Operation Faustschlag had by April 1918 removed the Bolsheviks from Ukraine.[44][45][46][47][48] The German and Austro-Hungarian victories in Ukraine were caused by the apathy of the locals and the inferior fighting skills of Bolsheviks troops to their Austro-Hungarian and German counterparts.[48]

Under Soviet pressure, the Volunteer Army embarked on the epic Ice March from Yekaterinodar to Kuban on 22 February 1918, where they joined with the Kuban Cossacks to mount an abortive assault on Yekaterinodar.[1]: 29  The Soviets recaptured Rostov on the next day.[1]: 29  Kornilov was killed in the fighting on 13 April, and Denikin took over command. Fighting off its pursuers without respite, the army succeeded in breaking its way through back towards the Don by May, where the Cossack uprising against Bolsheviks had started.[32]: 115–118 

The Baku Soviet Commune was established on 13 April. Germany landed its Caucasus Expedition troops in Poti on 8 June. The Ottoman Army of Islam (in coalition with Azerbaijan) drove them out of Baku on 26 July 1918. Subsequently, the Dashanaks, Right SRs and Mensheviks started negotiations with Gen. Dunsterville, the commander of the British troops in Persia. The Bolsheviks and their Left SR allies were opposed to it, but on 25 July the majority of the Soviets voted to call in the British and the Bolsheviks resigned. The Baku Soviet Commune ended its existence and was replaced by the Central Caspian Dictatorship.

In June 1918 the Volunteer Army, numbering some 9,000 men, started its Second Kuban campaign, capturing Yekaterinodar on 16 August, followed by Armavir and Stavropol. By early 1919, they controlled the Northern Caucasus.[32]: 166–174, 182, 189–190 

On 8 October, Alekseev died. On 8 January 1919, Denikin became the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces of South Russia, uniting the Volunteer Army with Pyotr Krasnov's Don Army. Pyotr Wrangel became Denikin's Chief of Staff.[32]: 195, 204, 267–270 

In December, three-fourths of the army was in the Northern Caucasus. That included three thousand of Vladimir Liakhov's soldiers around Vladikavkaz, thirteen thousand soldiers under Wrangel and Kazanovich in the center of the front, Stankevich's almost three thousand men with the Don Cossacks, while Vladimir May-Mayevsky's three thousand were sent to the Donets basin, and de Bode commanded two thousand in the Crimea.[49]

Eastern Russia, Siberia and Far East of Russia (1918)

Main articles: Revolt of the Czechoslovak Legion, Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly, and Provisional All-Russian Government

The revolt of the Czechoslovak Legion broke out in May 1918, and proceeded to occupy the Trans-Siberian Railway from Ufa to Vladivostok. Uprisings overthrew other Bolshevik towns. On 7 July, the western portion of the legion declared itself to be a new eastern front, anticipating allied intervention. According to William Henry Chamberlin, "Two governments emerged as a result of the first successes of the Czechs: the West Siberian Commissariat and the Government of the Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly in Samara." On 17 July, shortly before the fall of Yekaterinburg, the former Tsar Nicholas II, and his family were murdered.[50]: 6–12, 91 

 
Czechoslovak legionaries of the 8th Regiment at Nikolsk-Ussuriysky killed by Bolsheviks, 1918. Above them stand also members of the Czechoslovak Legion.

The Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries supported peasants fighting against Soviet control of food supplies.[51] In May 1918, with the support of the Czechoslovak Legion, they took Samara and Saratov, establishing the Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly—known as the "Komuch". By July the authority of the Komuch extended over much of the area controlled by the Czechoslovak Legion. The Komuch pursued an ambivalent social policy, combining democratic and socialist measures, such as the institution of an eight-hour working day, with "restorative" actions, such as returning both factories and land to their former owners. After the fall of Kazan, Vladimir Lenin called for the dispatch of Petrograd workers to the Kazan Front: "We must send down the maximum number of Petrograd workers: (1) a few dozen 'leaders' like Kayurov; (2) a few thousand militants 'from the ranks'".

After a series of reverses at the front, the Bolsheviks' War Commissar, Trotsky, instituted increasingly harsh measures in order to prevent unauthorised withdrawals, desertions and mutinies in the Red Army. In the field the Cheka special investigations forces, termed the Special Punitive Department of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combat of Counter-Revolution and Sabotage or Special Punitive Brigades, followed the Red Army, conducting field tribunals and summary executions of soldiers and officers who deserted, retreated from their positions or failed to display sufficient offensive zeal.[52][53] The Cheka special investigations forces were also charged with the detection of sabotage and counter-revolutionary activity by Red Army soldiers and commanders. Trotsky extended the use of the death penalty to the occasional political commissar whose detachment retreated or broke in the face of the enemy.[54] In August, frustrated at continued reports of Red Army troops breaking under fire, Trotsky authorised the formation of barrier troops – stationed behind unreliable Red Army units and given orders to shoot anyone withdrawing from the battle line without authorisation.[55]

 
Admiral Alexander Kolchak reviewing the troops, 1919

In September 1918, the Komuch, the Siberian Provisional Government, and other anti-Bolshevik Russians agreed during the State Meeting in Ufa to form a new Provisional All-Russian Government in Omsk, headed by a Directory of five: two Socialist-Revolutionaries. Nikolai Avksentiev and Vladimir Zenzinov, the Kadet lawyer V. A. Vinogradov, Siberian Premier Vologodskii, and General Vasily Boldyrev.[50]

By the fall of 1918 anti-Bolshevik White forces in the east included the People's Army (Komuch), the Siberian Army (of the Siberian Provisional Government) and insurgent Cossack units of Orenburg, Ural, Siberia, Semirechye, Baikal, Amur and Ussuri Cossacks, nominally under the orders of Gen. V.G. Boldyrev, Commander-in-Chief, appointed by the Ufa Directorate.

On the Volga, Col. Kappel's White detachment captured Kazan on 7 August, but the Reds re-captured the city on 8 September 1918 following a counteroffensive. On the 11th Simbirsk fell, and on 8 October Samara. The Whites fell back eastwards to Ufa and Orenburg.

In Omsk the Russian Provisional Government quickly came under the influence and later the dominance of its new War Minister, Rear-Admiral Kolchak. On 18 November a coup d'état established Kolchak as dictator. Two members of the Directory were arrested, and subsequently deported, while Kolchak was proclaimed "Supreme Ruler", and "Commander-in-chief of all land and naval forces of Russia."[50]: 177–178  By mid-December 1918 White armies had to leave Ufa, but they balanced that failure with a successful drive towards Perm, which they took on 24 December.

Central Asia (1918)

 
London Geographical Institute's 1919 map of Europe after the treaties of Brest-Litovsk and Batum and before the treaties of Tartu, Kars, and Riga

In February 1918 the Red Army overthrew the White Russian-supported Kokand autonomy of Turkestan.[56] Although that move seemed to solidify Bolshevik power in Central Asia, more troubles soon arose for the Red Army as the Allied Forces began to intervene. British support of the White Army provided the greatest threat to the Red Army in Central Asia during 1918. Britain sent three prominent military leaders to the area. One was Lieutenant Colonel Frederick Marshman Baile, who recorded a mission to Tashkent, from where the Bolsheviks forced him to flee. Another was General Wilfrid Malleson, leading the Malleson Mission, who assisted the Mensheviks in Ashkhabad (now the capital of Turkmenistan) with a small Anglo-Indian force. However, he failed to gain control of Tashkent, Bukhara and Khiva. The third was Major General Dunsterville, who was driven out by the Bolsheviks of Central Asia only a month after his arrival in August 1918.[57] Despite setbacks because of British invasions during 1918, the Bolsheviks continued to make progress in bringing the Central Asian population under their influence. The first regional congress of the Russian Communist Party convened in the city of Tashkent in June 1918 in order to build support for a local Bolshevik Party.[58]

Left SR uprising

Main articles: Left SR uprising and Yaroslavl Uprising

On 6 July 1918, two Left Socialist-Revolutionaries and Cheka employees, Yakov Blumkin and Nikolai Andreyev, assassinated the German ambassador, Count Mirbach. In Moscow a Left SR uprising was put down by the Bolsheviks, mass arrests of Socialist-Revolutionaries followed, and executions became more frequent. Chamberlin noted, "The time of relative leniency toward former fellow-revolutionists was over. The Left Socialists Revolutionaries, of course, were no longer tolerated as members of the Soviets; from this time the Soviet regime became a pure and undiluted dictatorship of the Communist Party." Similarly, Boris Savinkov's surprise attacks were suppressed, with many of the conspirators being executed, as "Mass Red Terror" became a reality.[50]: 50–59 

Estonia, Latvia and Petrograd

Main articles: Estonian War of Independence, Latvian War of Independence, and Battle of Petrograd

Estonia cleared its territory of the Red Army by January 1919.[59] Baltic German volunteers captured Riga from the Red Latvian Riflemen on 22 May, but the Estonian 3rd Division defeated the Baltic Germans a month later, aiding the establishment of the Republic of Latvia.[60]

 
General Nikolai Yudenich

That rendered possible another threat to the Red Army, from General Yudenich, who had spent the summer organizing the Northwestern Army in Estonia with local and British support. In October 1919, he tried to capture Petrograd in a sudden assault with a force of around 20,000 men. The attack was well-executed, using night attacks and lightning cavalry maneuvers to turn the flanks of the defending Red Army. Yudenich also had six British tanks, which caused panic whenever they appeared. The Allies gave large quantities of aid to Yudenich, but he complained of receiving insufficient support.

By 19 October, Yudenich's troops had reached the outskirts of the city. Some members of the Bolshevik central committee in Moscow were willing to give up Petrograd, but Trotsky refused to accept the loss of the city and personally organized its defenses. Trotsky himself declared, "It is impossible for a little army of 15,000 ex-officers to master a working-class capital of 700,000 inhabitants." He settled on a strategy of urban defense, proclaiming that the city would "defend itself on its own ground" and that the White Army would be lost in a labyrinth of fortified streets and there "meet its grave".[61]

Trotsky armed all available workers, men and women, ordering the transfer of military forces from Moscow. Within a few weeks, the Red Army defending Petrograd had tripled in size and outnumbered Yudenich three to one. Yudenich, short of supplies, then decided to call off the siege of the city and withdrew. He repeatedly asked permission to withdraw his army across the border to Estonia. However, units retreating across the border were disarmed and interned by orders of the Estonian government, which had entered into peace negotiations with the Soviet Government on 16 September and had been informed by the Soviet authorities of their 6 November decision that if the White Army was allowed to retreat into Estonia, it would be pursued across the border by the Reds.[62] In fact, the Reds attacked Estonian army positions and fighting continued until a ceasefire went into effect on 3 January 1920. After the Treaty of Tartu. most of Yudenich's soldiers went into exile. Former Imperial Russian and then Finnish General Mannerheim planned an intervention to help the Whites in Russia capture Petrograd. However, he did not gain the necessary support for the endeavour. Lenin considered it "completely certain, that the slightest aid from Finland would have determined the fate of [the city]".

Northern Russia (1919)

Main article: North Russia intervention

The British occupied Murmansk and, alongside the Americans, seized Arkhangelsk. With the retreat of Kolchak in Siberia, they pulled their troops out of the cities before the winter trapped them in the port. The remaining White forces under Yevgeny Miller evacuated the region in February 1920.[63]

Siberia (1919)

At the beginning of March 1919, the general offensive of the Whites on the eastern front began. Ufa was retaken on 13 March; by mid-April, the White Army stopped at the Glazov–Chistopol–Bugulma–Buguruslan–Sharlyk line. Reds started their counteroffensive against Kolchak's forces at the end of April. The Red 5th Army, led by the capable commander Tukhachevsky, captured Elabuga on 26 May, Sarapul on 2 June and Izevsk on the 7th and continued to push forward. Both sides had victories and losses, but by the middle of summer the Red Army was larger than the White Army and had managed to recapture territory previously lost.[64]

Following the abortive offensive at Chelyabinsk, the White armies withdrew beyond the Tobol. In September 1919 a White offensive was launched against the Tobol front, the last attempt to change the course of events. However, on 14 October the Reds counterattacked, and thus began the uninterrupted retreat of the Whites to the east. On 14 November 1919 the Red Army captured Omsk.[65] Adm. Kolchak lost control of his government shortly after the defeat; White Army forces in Siberia essentially had ceased to exist by December. Retreat of the eastern front by White armies lasted three months, until mid-February 1920, when the survivors, after crossing Lake Baikal, reached Chita area and joined Ataman Semenov's forces.

South Russia (1919)

 
White propaganda poster "For united Russia" representing the Bolsheviks as a fallen communist dragon and the White Cause as a crusading knight

The Cossacks had been unable to organise and capitalise on their successes at the end of 1918. By 1919 they had begun to run short of supplies. Consequently, when the Soviet counteroffensive began in January 1919 under the Bolshevik leader Antonov-Ovseenko, the Cossack forces rapidly fell apart. The Red Army captured Kiev on 3 February 1919.[66]

Denikin's military strength continued to grow in 1919, with significant munitions supplied by the British. In January, Denikin's Armed Forces of South Russia (AFSR) completed the elimination of Red forces in the northern Caucasus and moved north, in an effort to protect the Don district.[49]: 20–35 

On 18 December 1918, French forces landed in Odessa and then the Crimea, but evacuated Odessa on 6 April 1919, and the Crimea by the end of the month. According to Chamberlin, "But France gave far less practical aid to the Whites than did England; its sole independent venture in intervention, at Odessa, ended in a complete fiasco."[50]: 151, 165–167 

Denikin then reorganized the Armed Forces of South Russia under the leadership of Vladimir May-Mayevsky, Vladimir Sidorin, and Pyotr Wrangel. On 22 May, Wrangel's Caucasian army defeated the 10th Army (RSFSR) in the battle for Velikoknyazheskaya, and then captured Tsaritsyn on 1 July. Sidorin advanced north toward Voronezh, increasing his army's strength in the process. On 25 June, May-Mayevsky captured Kharkov, and then Ekaterinoslav on 30 June, which forced the Reds to abandon Crimea. On 3 July, Denikin issued his Moscow directive, in which his armies would converge on Moscow.[49]: 37–41 

Although Britain had withdrawn its own troops from the theatre, it continued to give significant military aid (money, weapons, food, ammunition and some military advisers) to the White Armies during 1919. Major Ewen Cameron Bruce of the British Army had volunteered to command a British tank mission assisting the White Army. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Order[67] for his bravery during the June 1919 Battle of Tsaritsyn for single-handedly storming and capturing the fortified city of Tsaritsyn, under heavy shell fire in a single tank, which led to the capture of over 40,000 prisoners.[68] The fall of Tsaritsyn is viewed "as one of the key battles of the Russian Civil War" and greatly helped the White Russian cause.[68] The notable historian Sir Basil Henry Liddell Hart comments that Bruce's tank action during the battle is to be seen as "one of the most remarkable feats in the whole history of the Tank Corps".[69]

On 14 August, the Bolsheviks launched their Southern Front counteroffensive. After six weeks of heavy fighting the counteroffensive failed, and Denikin was able to capture more territory. By November, White Forces had reached the Zbruch, the Ukrainian-Polish border.[49]: 43, 154 

 
General Pyotr Wrangel in Tsaritsyn, 15 October 1919

Denikin's forces constituted a real threat and for a time threatened to reach Moscow. The Red Army, stretched thin by fighting on all fronts, was forced out of Kiev on 30 August. Kursk and Orel were taken, on 20 September and 14 October, respectively. The latter, only 205 miles (330 km) from Moscow, was the closest the AFSR would come to its target.[70] The Cossack Don Army under the command of General Vladimir Sidorin continued north towards Voronezh, but Semyon Budyonny's cavalrymen defeated them there on 24 October. That allowed the Red Army to cross the Don River, threatening to split the Don and Volunteer Armies. Fierce fighting took place at the key rail junction of Kastornoye, which was taken on 15 November. Kursk was retaken two days later.[71]

 
Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge, a famous Bolshevik Constructivist propaganda poster by artist El Lissitsky uses abstract symbolism to depict the defeat of the Whites by the Red Army.

Kenez states, "In October Denikin ruled more than forty million people and controlled the economically most valuable parts of the Russian Empire." Yet, "The White armies, which had fought victoriously during the summer and early fall, fell back in disorder in November and December." Denikin's front line was overstretched, while his reserves dealt with Makhno's anarchists in the rear. Between September and October, the Reds mobilized one hundred thousand new soldiers and adopted the Trotsky-Vatsetis strategy with the Ninth and Tenth armies forming V. I. Shorin's Southeastern Front between Tsaritsyn and Bobrov, while the Eighth, Twelfth, Thirteenth, and Fourteenth armies formed A.I. Egorov's Southern Front between Zhitomir and Bobrov. Sergey Kamenev was in overall command of the two fronts. On Denikin's left was Abram Dragomirov, while in his center was Vladimir May-Mayevsky's Volunteer Army, Vladimir Sidorin's Don Cossacks were further east, with Pyotr Wrangel's Caucasian army at Tsaritsyn, and an additional was in the Northern Caucasus attempting to capture Astrakhan. On 20 October, Mai-Maevskii was forced to evacuate Orel during the Orel-Kursk operation. On 24 October, Semyon Budyonny captured Voronezh, and Kursk on 15 November, during the Voronezh-Kastornoye operation (1919). On 6 January, the Reds reached the Black Sea at Mariupol and Taganrog, and On 9 January, they reached Rostov. According to Kenez, "The Whites had now lost all the territories which they had conquered in 1919, and held approximately the same area in which they had started two years before."[49]: 213–223 

Central Asia (1919)

By February 1919 the British government had pulled its military forces out of Central Asia.[72] Despite the success for the Red Army, the White Army's assaults in European Russia and other areas broke communication between Moscow and Tashkent. For a time Central Asia was completely cut off from Red Army forces in Siberia.[73] Although the communication failure weakened the Red Army, the Bolsheviks continued their efforts to gain support for the Bolshevik Party in Central Asia by holding a second regional conference in March. During the conference, a regional bureau of Muslim organisations of the Russian Bolshevik Party was formed. The Bolshevik Party continued to try to gain support among the native population by giving it the impression of better representation for the Central Asian population and throughout the end of the year could maintain harmony with the Central Asian people.[74]

Communication difficulties with Red Army forces in Siberia and European Russia ceased to be a problem by mid-November 1919. Red Army successes north of Central Asia caused communication with Moscow to be re-established and the Bolsheviks to claim victory over the White Army in Turkestan.[73]

In the Ural-Guryev operation of 1919–1920, the Red Turkestan Front defeated the Ural Army. During winter 1920, Ural Cossacks and their families, totaling about 15,000 people, headed south along the eastern coast of the Caspian Sea towards Fort Alexandrovsk. Only a few hundred of them reached Persia in June 1920.[75] The Orenburg Independent Army was formed from Orenburg Cossacks and others troops who rebelled against the Bolsheviks. During the winter 1919–20, the Orenburg Army retreated to Semirechye in what is known as the Starving March, as half of the participants perished.[76] In March 1920 her remnants crossed the border into the Northwestern region of China.

South Russia, Ukraine and Kronstadt (1920–21)

 
Victims of the Russian famine of 1921

At the beginning of 1920, Denikin was reduced to defending Novorossia, the Crimean peninsula, and the Northern Caucasus. On 26 January, the Caucasian army retreated beyond the Manych. On 7 February, the Reds occupied Odessa, but then Makhno started fighting the Fourteenth Red Army. On 20 February, Denikin succeeded in recapturing Rostov, his last victory, before giving it up soon after.[49]: 236–239 

By the beginning of 1920, the main body of the Armed Forces of South Russia was rapidly retreating towards the Don, to Rostov. Denikin hoped to hold the crossings of the Don, then rest and reform his troops, but the White Army was not able to hold the Don area, and at the end of February 1920 started a retreat across Kuban towards Novorossiysk. Slipshod evacuation of Novorossiysk proved to be a dark event for the White Army. Russian and Allied ships evacuated about 40,000 of Denikin's men from Novorossiysk to the Crimea, without horses or any heavy equipment, while about 20,000 men were left behind and either dispersed or captured by the Red Army. Following the disastrous Novorossiysk evacuation, Denikin stepped down and the military council elected Wrangel as the new Commander-in-Chief of the White Army. He was able to restore order to the dispirited troops and reshape an army that could fight as a regular force again. It remained an organized force in the Crimea throughout 1920.[77]

 
Tambov Rebellion was one of the largest and best-organised peasant rebellions challenging the Bolshevik regime

After Moscow's Bolshevik government signed a military and political alliance with Nestor Makhno and the Ukrainian anarchists, the Insurgent Army attacked and defeated several regiments of Wrangel's troops in southern Ukraine, forcing him to retreat before he could capture that year's grain harvest.[78]

Stymied in his efforts to consolidate his hold, Wrangel then attacked north in an attempt to take advantage of recent Red Army defeats at the close of the Polish–Soviet War of 1919–1920. The Red Army eventually halted the offensive, and Wrangel's troops had to retreat to Crimea in November 1920, pursued by both the Red and Black cavalry and infantry. Wrangel's fleet evacuated him and his army to Constantinople on 14 November 1920, ending the struggle of Reds and Whites in Southern Russia.[79]

After the defeat of Wrangel, the Red Army immediately repudiated its 1920 treaty of alliance with Nestor Makhno and attacked the anarchist Insurgent Army; the campaign to liquidate Makhno and the Ukrainian anarchists began with an attempted assassination of Makhno by Cheka agents. Anger at continued repression by the Bolshevik Communist government and at its liberal use of the Cheka to put down anarchist elements led to a naval mutiny at Kronstadt in March 1921, followed by peasant revolts. Red Army attacks on the anarchist forces and their sympathisers increased in ferocity throughout 1921.[80]

Siberia and the Far East (1920–22)

Main article: Far Eastern Front in the Russian Civil War

In Siberia, Admiral Kolchak's army had disintegrated. He himself gave up command after the loss of Omsk and designated Gen. Grigory Semyonov as the new leader of the White Army in Siberia. Not long afterward, Kolchak was arrested by the disaffected Czechoslovak Corps as he traveled towards Irkutsk without the protection of the army and was turned over to the socialist Political Centre in Irkutsk. Six days later, the regime was replaced by a Bolshevik-dominated Military-Revolutionary Committee. On 6–7 February Kolchak and his prime minister Victor Pepelyaev were shot and their bodies were thrown through the ice of the frozen Angara River, just before the arrival of the White Army in the area.[1]: 319–21 

Remnants of Kolchak's army reached Transbaikalia and joined Semyonov's troops, forming the Far Eastern army. With the support of the Japanese army it was able to hold Chita, but after the withdrawal of Japanese soldiers from Transbaikalia, Semenov's position became untenable, and in November 1920 he was driven by the Red Army from Transbaikalia and took refuge in China. The Japanese, who had plans to annex the Amur Krai, finally pulled their troops out as Bolshevik forces gradually asserted control over the Russian Far East. On 25 October 1922 Vladivostok fell to the Red Army, and the Provisional Priamur Government was extinguished.

Aftermath

Ensuing rebellion

In Central Asia, Red Army troops continued to face resistance into 1923, where basmachi (armed bands of Islamic guerrillas) had formed to fight the Bolshevik takeover. The Soviets engaged non-Russian peoples in Central Asia, like Magaza Masanchi, commander of the Dungan Cavalry Regiment, to fight against the Basmachis. The Communist Party did not completely dismantle the group until 1934.[81]

General Anatoly Pepelyayev continued armed resistance in the Ayano-Maysky District until June 1923. The regions of Kamchatka and Northern Sakhalin remained under Japanese occupation until their treaty with the Soviet Union in 1925, when their forces were finally withdrawn.

Casualties

 
Street children during the Russian Civil War
See also: Red Terror (Russia) and White Terror (Russia)

The results of the civil war were momentous. Soviet demographer Boris Urlanis estimated the total number of men killed in action in the Civil War and Polish–Soviet War as 300,000 (125,000 in the Red Army, 175,500 White armies and Poles) and the total number of military personnel dead from disease (on both sides) as 450,000.[82] Boris Sennikov estimated the total losses among the population of Tambov region in 1920 to 1922 resulting from the war, executions, and imprisonment in concentration camps as approximately 240,000.[83]

As many as 10 million lives were lost as a result of the Russian Civil War, and the overwhelming majority of these were civilian casualties.[84] During the Red Terror, estimates of Cheka executions range from 12,733 to 1.7 million. William Henry Chamberlin suspected that there were about 50,000.[85] Evan Mawdsley suspected that there were more than 12,733, and less than 200,000.[1]: 286  Some sources claimed at least 250,000 summary executions of "enemies of the people" with estimates reaching above a million.[86][87][88][89] More modest estimates put the numbers executed by the Bolsheviks between December 1917 and February 1922 at around 28,000 per year, with roughly 10,000 executions during the Red Terror.[90]

Some 300,000–500,000 Cossacks were killed or deported during Decossackization, out of a population of around three million.[91] An estimated 100,000 Jews were killed in Ukraine.[92] Punitive organs of the All Great Don Cossack Host sentenced 25,000 people to death between May 1918 and January 1919.[93] Kolchak's government shot 25,000 people in Ekaterinburg province alone.[94] The White Terror, as it would become known, killed about 300,000 people in total.[95]

At the end of the Civil War the Russian SFSR was exhausted and near ruin. The droughts of 1920 and 1921, as well as the 1921 famine, worsened the disaster still further, killing roughly 5 million people. Disease had reached pandemic proportions, with 3,000,000 dying of typhus throughout the war. Millions more also died of widespread starvation, wholesale massacres by both sides and pogroms against Jews in Ukraine and southern Russia. By 1922 there were at least 7,000,000 street children in Russia as a result of nearly ten years of devastation from World War I and the civil war.[96]

Another one to two million people, known as the White émigrés, fled Russia, many with General Wrangel, some through the Far East and others west into the newly independent Baltic countries. The émigrés included a large percentage of the educated and skilled population of Russia.

The Russian economy was devastated by the war, with factories and bridges destroyed, cattle and raw materials pillaged, mines flooded and machines damaged. The industrial production value descended to one seventh of the value of 1913 and agriculture to one third. According to Pravda, "The workers of the towns and some of the villages choke in the throes of hunger. The railways barely crawl. The houses are crumbling. The towns are full of refuse. Epidemics spread and death strikes—industry is ruined."[citation needed] It is estimated that the total output of mines and factories in 1921 had fallen to 20% of the pre-World War level, and many crucial items experienced an even more drastic decline. For example, cotton production fell to 5%, and iron to 2%, of pre-war levels.

War Communism saved the Soviet government during the Civil War, but much of the Russian economy had ground to a standstill. Some peasants responded to requisitions by refusing to till the land. By 1921 cultivated land had shrunk to 62% of the pre-war area, and the harvest yield was only about 37% of normal. The number of horses declined from 35 million in 1916 to 24 million in 1920 and cattle from 58 to 37 million. The exchange rate with the US dollar declined from two roubles in 1914 to 1,200 Rbls in 1920.

With the end of the war, the Communist Party no longer faced an acute military threat to its existence and power. However, the perceived threat of another intervention, combined with the failure of socialist revolutions in other countries—most notably the German Revolution—contributed to the continued militarisation of Soviet society. Although Russia experienced extremely rapid economic growth[97] in the 1930s, the combined effect of World War I and the Civil War left a lasting scar on Russian society and had permanent effects on the development of the Soviet Union.

In fiction

Literature

Film

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Soviet-Polish War.
  2. ^ De facto deposed after the Bolshevik Coup of November 1917; formally abolished in January 1918 after the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly.
  3. ^ Finnish Civil War
  4. ^ Polish-Soviet War
  5. ^ Basmachi movement
  6. ^ Aligned with the Bolsheviks until March 1918, when they fell out over the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Most Left SRs opposed the Bolsheviks afterward, but a minority of Left SRs remained allied to the Bolsheviks for years after.
  7. ^ Aligned with the Bolsheviks until 1919; opposed after.
  8. ^ Aligned with the Bolsheviks until 1920; opposed after.
  9. ^ Japan also stayed in North Sakhalin until 1925.
  10. ^ Official allegiance to the Russian State
    Unofficial allegiance to the German Empire
  11. ^ The main phase ended on 25 October 1922. Revolt against the Bolsheviks continued in Central Asia and the Far East through the 1920s and 1930s.
  12. ^ The Red Army peaked in October 1920 with 5,498,000: 2,587,000 in reserves, 391,000 in labor armies, 159,000 on the front and 1,780,000 drawing rations
  13. ^ 683,000 active
    340,000 reserve
  14. ^ There were an additional 6,242,926 hospitalizations from sickness.

References

Citations

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  5. ^ Belash, Victor & Belash, Aleksandr, Dorogi Nestora Makhno, p. 340
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Bibliography

See also: Bibliography of the Russian Revolution and Civil War
  • Allworth, Edward (1967). Central Asia: A Century of Russian Rule. New York: Columbia University Press. OCLC 396652.
  • Andrew, Christopher; Mitrokhin, Vasili (1999). The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB. New York: Basic Books. p. 28. ISBN 978-0465003129. kgb cheka executions probably numbered as many as 250,000.
  • Bullock, David (2008). The Russian Civil War 1918–22. Oxford: Osprey Publishing. ISBN 978-1-84603-271-4. from the original on 28 July 2020. Retrieved 26 December 2017.
  • Calder, Kenneth J. (1976). Britain and the Origins of the New Europe 1914–1918. International Studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521208970. Retrieved 6 October 2017.
  • Chamberlin, William Henry (1987). The Russian Revolution, Volume II: 1918–1921: From the Civil War to the Consolidation of Power. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-1400858705. from the original on 27 December 2017. Retrieved 27 December 2017 – via Project MUSE.
  • Coates, W. P.; Coates, Zelda K. (1951). Soviets in Central Asia. New York: Philosophical Library. OCLC 1533874.
  • Daniels, Robert V. (1993). A Documentary History of Communism in Russia: From Lenin to Gorbachev. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England. ISBN 978-0-87451-616-6.
  • Eidintas, Alfonsas; Žalys, Vytautas; Senn, Alfred Erich (1999), Lithuania in European Politics: The Years of the First Republic, 1918–1940 (Paperback ed.), New York: St. Martin's Press, ISBN 0-312-22458-3
  • Erickson, John. (1984). The Soviet High Command: A Military-Political History, 1918–1941: A Military Political History, 1918–1941. Westview Press, Inc. ISBN 978-0-367-29600-1.
  • Figes, Orlando (1997). A People's Tragedy: A History of the Russian Revolution. New York: Viking. ISBN 978-0670859160.
  • Gellately, Robert (2007). Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe. New York: Knopf. ISBN 978-1-4000-4005-6.
  • Grebenkin, I.N. "The Disintegration of the Russian Army in 1917: Factors and Actors in the Process." Russian Studies in History 56.3 (2017): 172–187.
  • Haupt, Georges & Marie, Jean-Jacques (1974). Makers of the Russian revolution. London: George Allen & Unwin. ISBN 978-0801408090.
  • Holquist, Peter (2002). Making War, Forging Revolution: Russia's Continuum of Crisis, 1914–1921. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-00907-X.
  • Kenez, Peter (1977). Civil War in South Russia, 1919–1920: The Defeat of the Whites. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 978-0520033467.
  • Kinvig, Clifford (2006). Churchill's Crusade: The British Invasion of Russia, 1918–1920. London: Hambledon Continuum. ISBN 978-1847250216.
  • Krivosheev, G. F. (1997). Soviet Casualties and Combat Losses in the Twentieth Century. London: Greenhill Books. ISBN 978-1-85367-280-4.
  • Mawdsley, Evan (2007). The Russian Civil War. New York: Pegasus Books. ISBN 978-1681770093.
  • Overy, Richard (2004). The Dictators: Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-0-393-02030-4.
  • Rakowska-Harmstone, Teresa (1970). Russia and Nationalism in Central Asia: The Case of Tadzhikistan. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press. ISBN 978-0801810213.
  • Read, Christopher (1996). From Tsar to Soviets. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0195212419.
  • Rosenthal, Reigo (2006). Loodearmee [Northwestern Army] (in Estonian). Tallinn: Argo. ISBN 9949-415-45-4.
  • Ryan, James (2012). Lenin's Terror: The Ideological Origins of Early Soviet State Violence. London: Routledge. ISBN 978-1-138-81568-1. from the original on 11 November 2020. Retrieved 15 May 2017.
  • Stewart, George (2009). The White Armies of Russia A Chronicle of Counter-Revolution and Allied Intervention. ISBN 978-1847349767.
  • Smith, David A.; Tucker, Spencer C. (2014). "Faustschlag, Operation". World War I: The Definitive Encyclopedia and Document Collection. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO. pp. 554–555. ISBN 978-1851099658. from the original on 15 February 2017. Retrieved 27 December 2017.
  • Thompson, John M. (1996). A Vision Unfulfilled. Russia and the Soviet Union in the Twentieth Century. Lexington, MA. ISBN 978-0669282917.
  • Volkogonov, Dmitri (1996). Trotsky: The Eternal Revolutionary. Translated and edited by Harold Shukman. London: HarperCollins Publishers. ISBN 978-0002552721.
  • Wheeler, Geoffrey (1964). The Modern History of Soviet Central Asia. New York: Frederick A. Praeger. OCLC 865924756.

Further reading

  • Acton, Edward, V. et al. eds. Critical companion to the Russian Revolution, 1914–1921 (Indiana UP, 1997).
  • Brovkin, Vladimir N. (1994). Behind the Front Lines of the Civil War: Political Parties and Social Movements in Russia, 1918–1922. Princeton UP. excerpt 28 July 2020 at the Wayback Machine
  • Dupuy, T. N. The Encyclopedia of Military History (many editions) Harper & Row Publishers.
  • Ford, Chris. "Reconsidering the Ukrainian Revolution 1917–1921: The Dialectics of National Liberation and Social Emancipation." Debatte 15.3 (2007): 279–306.
  • Peter Kenez. Civil War in South Russia, 1918: The First Year of the Volunteer Army (U of California Press, 1971).
  • Lincoln, W. Bruce. Red victory: A history of the Russian Civil War (1989).
  • Luckett, Richard. The White Generals: An Account of the White Movement and the Russian Civil War (Routledge, 2017).
  • Marples, David R. Lenin's Revolution: Russia, 1917–1921 (Routledge, 2014).
  • Moffat, Ian, ed. The Allied Intervention in Russia, 1918–1920: The Diplomacy of Chaos (2015)
  • Polyakov, Yuri. The Civil War in Russia: Its Causes and Significance (Novosti, 1981).
  • Serge, Victor. Year One of the Russian Revolution (Haymarket, 2015).
  • Smele, Jonathan D. "'If Grandma had Whiskers...': Could the Anti-Bolsheviks have won the Russian Revolutions and Civil Wars? Or, the Constraints and Conceits of Counterfactual History." Revolutionary Russia (2020): 1–32. doi:10.1080/09546545.2019.1675961. 28 July 2020 at the Wayback Machine
  • Smele, Jonathan. The 'Russian' Civil Wars, 1916–1926: Ten Years That Shook the World (Oxford UP, 2016).
  • Smele, Jonathan D. Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916–1926 (2 Vol. Rowman & Littlefield, 2015).
  • Stewart, George. The White Armies of Russia: A Chronicle of Counter-Revolution and Allied Intervention (2008) excerpt 27 June 2015 at the Wayback Machine
  • Stone, David R. "The Russian Civil War, 1917–1921," in The Military History of the Soviet Union.
  • Swain, Geoffrey (2015). The Origins of the Russian Civil War excerpt 28 July 2020 at the Wayback Machine
    • Smele, Jonathan D. "Still Searching for the 'Third Way': Geoffrey Swain's Interventions in the Russian Civil Wars". Europe-Asia Studies 68.10 (2016): 1793–1812.

Primary sources

  • Butt, V. P., et al., eds. The Russian Civil War: Documents from the Soviet Archives (Springer, 2016).
  • McCauley, Martin, ed. The Russian Revolution and the Soviet State 1917–1921: Documents (Springer, 1980).
  • Murphy, A. Brian, ed. The Russian Civil War: Primary Sources (Springer, 2000) online review 27 June 2020 at the Wayback Machine

External links

 
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Civil war of Russia.
 
Wikiquote has quotations related to Russian Civil War.
  • Newsreels about Russian Civil War // Net-Film Newsreels and Documentary Films Archive
  • Sumpf, Alexandre: Russian Civil War, in: 1914–1918 online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War.
  • Mawdsley, Evan: International Responses to the Russian Civil War (Russian Empire), in: 1914–1918 online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War.
  • Read, Christopher: Revolutions (Russian Empire), in: 1914–1918 online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War.
  • Peeling, Siobhan: War Communism, in: 1914–1918 online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War.
  • Beyrau, Dietrich: Post-war Societies (Russian Empire), in: 1914–1918 online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War.
  • Brudek, Pawe³: Revolutions (East Central Europe), in: 1914–1918 online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War.
  • Melancon, Michael S.: Social Conflict and Control, Protest and Repression (Russian Empire), in: 1914–1918 online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War.
  • Russian Revolution and Civil War archive at libcom.org/library
  • "BBC History of the Russian Revolution" (3 February 2007)
  • "Russian Civil War" (Spartacus History, downloaded 3 January 2006)
  • (On War website, downloaded 4 January 2006)
  • "Civil War of 1917–1922 at Encyclopedia of Russian History (3 February 2007)

February 09, 2023
russian, civil, other, uses, disambiguation, this, article, unclear, citation, style, references, used, made, clearer, with, different, consistent, style, citation, footnoting, july, 2020, learn, when, remove, this, template, message, russian, Гражданская, вой. For other uses see Russian Civil War disambiguation This article has an unclear citation style The references used may be made clearer with a different or consistent style of citation and footnoting July 2020 Learn how and when to remove this template message The Russian Civil War Russian Grazhdanskaya vojna v Rossii tr Grazhdanskaya voyna v Rossii 7 November 1917 16 June 1923 1 was a multi party civil war in the former Russian Empire sparked by the overthrowing of the monarchy and the new republican government s failure to maintain stability as many factions vied to determine Russia s political future It resulted in the formation of the RSFSR and later the Soviet Union in most of its territory Its finale marked the end of the Russian Revolution which was one of the key events of the 20th century Russian Civil WarPart of the Russian Revolution and the aftermath of World War IClockwise from top left Soldiers of the Don Army Soldiers of the Siberian Army Suppression of the Kronstadt rebellion American troop in Vladivostok during the intervention Victims of the Red Terror in Crimea Hanging of workers in Yekaterinoslav by the Austrians A review of Red Army troops in Moscow Date7 November 1917 16 June 1923 k 1 3 230 2 5 years 7 months and 9 days Peace treaties Treaty of Brest LitovskSigned 3 March 1918 3 months 3 weeks and 3 days Treaty of Tartu Russian Estonian Signed 2 February 1920 2 years 2 months 3 weeks and 5 days Soviet Lithuanian Peace TreatySigned 12 July 1920 2 years 8 months and 5 days Treaty of Tartu Russian Finnish Signed 14 October 1920 2 years 11 months and 1 week Latvian Soviet Peace TreatySigned 11 August 1920 2 years 9 months and 4 days Peace of RigaSigned 17 September 1921 3 years 10 months 1 week and 3 days Treaty of KarsSigned 13 October 1921 3 years 10 months and 6 days LocationFormer Russian Empire Galicia Mongolia Tuva PersiaResultBolshevik victory Collapse of the Russian Republic and Russian State Execution of the Russian Imperial family Defeat of the White movement and its exodus Creation of the Soviet Union in most of the former Empire Creation of Bolshevist Mongolian and Tuvan states Expulsion of many prominent Russian intellectuals and activists Beginning of anti Bolshevik resistancePartial victory by independence movements 3 7 Finland Estonia Latvia Lithuania and Poland gain independence Ukraine Belarus Georgia Armenia Azerbaijan Moldavia and many other nations of the former Russian Empire are either annexed by the Bolsheviks or by other nations Socialist movements or Bolshevik puppet states in Finland Estonia Latvia Lithuania and Poland defeatedTerritorialchangesCessions to Bolshevik states Establishment of the Soviet UnionEstablishment of Mongolian and Tuvan republicsCession of Russia proper Kuban Don Eastern Karelia Siberia and Far East Central Southern and Eastern Ukraine Eastern Belarus Northern Caucasus Transcaucasia and Central Asia to the Soviet UnionJoint Sino Soviet administration of the Chinese Eastern Railway until 1952Cession of Uryankhay Krai to TuvaCession of Bogd Khanate to Mongolia Cessions to national separatists Independence of Finland Estonia Latvia Lithuania and PolandCession of Vistula Western Belarus and Western Ukraine to PolandCession of Grand Duchy and Petsamo to FinlandCession of Autonomous Governorate to EstoniaCession of Southern Livonia and Courland to LatviaCession of Northern Vilna and Kovno Governorate to Lithuania Cessions to other nations Cession of Bessarabia to RomaniaCession of Kars to TurkeyCession of concessions in Tianjin and Hankou to ChinaBelligerentsBolsheviks Russian SFSR 1917 22 Ukrainian SSR 1917 18 1918 1919 22 Belarusian SSR 1919 1919 20 1920 22 Transcaucasian SFSR 1922 Soviet Union after 1922 Also Bessarabian SSR 1919 Finnish SWR 1918 D KRSR 1918 Odessa SR 1918 Taurida SSR 1918 Baku Commune 1918 Estonian Commune 1918 19 Latvian SSR 1918 20 Lithuanian SSR 1918 19 Far Eastern Republic 1920 22 Galician SSR 1920 Polrewkom 1920 Persian SSR 1920 21 Armenian SSR 1920 22 Azerbaijan SSR 1920 22 Georgian SSR 1921 22 Khorezm PSR after 1920 Bukharan PSR after 1920 Supported by Chinese communists 1917 23 Red Latvian Riflemen 1917 20 Lithuania a 1919 20 MPP 1920 23 Russian Republic b 1917 18 White Guards South Russia 1917 19 Mar Apr Apr Nov 1920 Russian State 1918 20 Eastern Okraina 1920 Provisional Priamurye Government after 1921 Also Provisional Regional Government of the Urals 1918 Omsk Siberian Government 1918 Vladivostok Siberian Government 1918 Komuch 1918 North Russia 1918 1918 20 Northwest Russia 1918 19 Crimea 1918 19 Don Republic 1918 20 Kuban Republic 1918 20 Supported by Alash Orda 1917 18 Mongolia 1921 Persia 1919 20 Separatists Poland 1918 21 Finland 1917 18 Ukraine 1917 18 1918 20 Estonia 1918 20 Latvia 1918 20 Lithuania 1918 20 Also West Ukraine 1918 19 Central Lithuania 1920 22 Moldavia 1917 18 Transcaucasia 1918 Georgia 1918 21 Armenia 1918 20 1921 Turkestan 1917 18 Centrocaspia 1918 Aras 1918 19 Caucasian Emirate 1919 20 Azerbaijan 1918 20 Northern Caucasus 1917 21 Green Ukraine 1918 22 Buryat Mongolia 1917 21 Yakutia 1918 Altai 1917 20 1921 22 Karelia 1918 20 1920 1920 23 North Ingria 1919 20 Basmachi 1918 22 Bukhara 1920 Khiva 1918 20 Supported by Sweden c 1918 Hungary d 1919 20 Afghanistan e until 1922 Anti Bolshevik Left Left SRs f 1917 21 Green Army g 1918 21 Makhnovshchina h 1918 21 Kronstadt sailors 1921 Allied Powers Japan i 1918 22 United Kingdom 1918 20 United States 1918 20 France 1918 20 Also Czechoslovakia 1918 20 GreeceSerbia after 1918 Romania ItalyChina Canada 1918 19 Australia 1918 19 India South AfricaCentral Powers Germany 1917 18 1919 Austria Hungary 1917 18 Ottoman Empire 1917 18 1920 21 Freikorps 1918 19 Collaborators Kingdom of Poland 1917 18 Kingdom of Finland 1918 Kingdom of Lithuania 1918 Belarus 1918 19 Ukrainian State 1918 Georgia 1918 Landeswehr 1918 20 Bermontians 1918 20 j Commanders and leadersVladimir Lenin Leon Trotsky Jukums Vacietis Yakov Sverdlov S Kamenev N Podvoisky Joseph Stalin Y Medvedev Vilhelm Knorin A KrasnoshchyokovA Kerensky Alexander Kolchak Lavr Kornilov Anton Denikin Pyotr Wrangel Nikolai Yudenich Grigory Semyonov Yevgeny Miller Pyotr Krasnov R von Ungern Jozef Pilsudski C G E Mannerheim Symon Petliura Konstantin Pats Janis CaksteAntanas Smetona S Tikhonov Noe Zhordania A Khatisian Nasib YusifbeyliVladimir Volsky Maria Spiridonova Nykyfor Hryhoriv Nestor Makhno Stepan Petrichenko and othersOtani Kikuzo Edmund Ironside William S Graves Radola Gajda Maurice Janin and othersH von Eichhorn Nuri Pasha Jan Sierada Pavlo SkoropadskyiP Bermondt Avalov and othersStrengthRed Army 5 498 000 peak 4 l Makhnovtsi 103 000 peak 5 Green Army 70 000 peak Kronstadt Mutineers 17 961White Army 1 023 000 peak m Local forces AFSR 270 000 peak Siberian Army 60 000 peak Komuch Army 30 000 peak Northwestern Army 18 500 peak Northern Army 54 700 peak Western Army 48 000 peak Orenburg Army 25 000 peak Ural Army 17 200 peak Japanese Army 70 000 peak Czechoslovak Legion 50 000 peak Also AEF Siberia 7 950British Army 57 636 6 Romanian Army 50 000French Army 15 600 Hellenic Army 23 000CSEF 5 000AEF North Russia 5 000Legione Redenta 2 500Beiyang Army 2 300Serbian Army 2 000British Indian Army 950Australian Army 150Polish Army 1 000 000 peak Finnish Army 90 000 peak Also Ukrainian Army 100 000 peak Supported by Hungarian Army 30 000 peak Latvian Army 69 232 peak Estonian Army 86 000 peak Lithuanian Army 20 000 peak Finnish Volunteers 8 000 peak Forest Guerrillas 2 000 peak Swedish Brigade 1 000 peak German Army 547 000 peak Also Saxon Volunteers 10 000 peak Caucasus Army 20 000 peak Turkish Army 20 000 peak Iron Division 14 000 peak Landeswehr 10 500 peak Bermontians 50 000 peak Casualties and losses 1 500 000 7 259 213 killed citation needed 60 059 missing citation needed 616 605 died of disease wounds citation needed 3 878 died in accidents suicides citation needed 548 857 wounded frostbitten 8 n 1 500 000 9 127 000 killed citation needed 784 000 executed dead citation needed 450 000 wounded sick citation needed 13 000 killed6 500 killed938 killed 10 596 killed350 killed179 killed 250 000 57 000 killed 113 000 wounded 50 000 POWs 125 000 15 000 killed 5 000 3 500 killed 1 650 executed dead3 888 killed3 046 killed1 444 killed 11 55 killed 500 killed7 000 000 12 000 000 total casualties includingcivilians and non combatants 1 2 million refugees outside Russia The Russian monarchy had been overthrown by the 1917 February Revolution and Russia was in a state of political flux A tense summer culminated in the Bolshevik led October Revolution overthrowing the Provisional Government of the Russian Republic Bolshevik rule was not universally accepted and the country descended into civil war The two largest combatants were the Red Army fighting for the Bolshevik form of socialism led by Vladimir Lenin and the loosely allied forces known as the White Army which included diverse interests favouring political monarchism capitalism and social democracy each with democratic and anti democratic variants In addition rival militant socialists notably the Ukrainian anarchists of the Makhnovshchina and Left Socialist Revolutionaries were involved in conflict against the Bolsheviks They as well as non ideological green armies opposed the Bolsheviks the Whites and the foreign interventionists 12 Thirteen foreign nations intervened against the Red Army notably the Allied intervention whose primary goal was re establishing the Eastern Front Three foreign nations of the Central Powers also intervened rivaling the Allied intervention with the main goal of retaining the territory they had received in the Treaty of Brest Litovsk The Bolsheviks initially consolidated control over most of the empire The Treaty of Brest Litovsk was an emergency peace with the German Empire who had captured vast swathes of the Russian Empire during the chaos of the revolution In May 1918 the Czechoslovak Legion in Russia revolted in Siberia In reaction the Allies began their North Russian and Siberian interventions That combined with the creation of the Provisional All Russian Government saw the reduction of Bolshevik controlled territory to most of European Russia and parts of Central Asia In November Alexander Kolchak launched a coup to take control of the Russian State establishing a de facto military dictatorship In 1919 the White Army launched several attacks from the east in March the south in July and west in October The advances were later checked by the Eastern Front counteroffensive the Southern Front counteroffensive and the defeat of the Northwestern Army The White Movement also suffered greater losses after the Allies pulled back from northern and southern Russia With the main base of the RSFSR secured the Bolsheviks could now strike back with a solid defensive position The armies under Kolchak were eventually forced on a mass retreat eastward Bolshevik forces advanced east despite encountering resistance in Chita Yakut and Mongolia Soon the Red Army split the Don and Volunteer armies forcing evacuations in Novorossiysk in March and the Crimea in November 1920 After that anti Bolshevik resistance was sporadic for several years until the collapse of the White Army in Yakutia in June 1923 but continued on in Central Asia and Khabarovsk Krai until 1934 There were an estimated 7 to 12 million casualties during the war mostly civilians 1 287 Many pro independence movements emerged after the break up of the Russian Empire and fought in the war 3 7 Several parts of the former Russian Empire Finland Estonia Latvia Lithuania and Poland were established as sovereign states with their own civil wars and wars of independence The rest of the former Russian Empire was consolidated into the Soviet Union shortly afterwards 13 Contents 1 Background 1 1 World War I 1 2 February Revolution 1 3 October Revolution 1 4 Formation of the Red Army 1 5 Anti Bolshevik movement 1 6 Allied intervention 1 7 Buffer states 2 Geography and chronology 3 Warfare 3 1 October Revolution 3 2 Initial anti Bolshevik uprisings 3 3 Peace with the Central Powers 3 4 Ukraine South Russia and Caucasus 1918 3 5 Eastern Russia Siberia and Far East of Russia 1918 3 6 Central Asia 1918 3 7 Left SR uprising 3 8 Estonia Latvia and Petrograd 3 9 Northern Russia 1919 3 10 Siberia 1919 3 11 South Russia 1919 3 12 Central Asia 1919 3 13 South Russia Ukraine and Kronstadt 1920 21 3 14 Siberia and the Far East 1920 22 4 Aftermath 4 1 Ensuing rebellion 4 2 Casualties 5 In fiction 5 1 Literature 5 2 Film 6 See also 7 Notes 8 References 8 1 Citations 8 2 Bibliography 9 Further reading 9 1 Primary sources 10 External linksBackground EditWorld War I Edit Main article World War I The Russian Empire fought in World War I from 1914 alongside France and the United Kingdom Triple Entente against Germany Austria Hungary and later the Ottoman Empire Central Powers February Revolution Edit Main article February Revolution The February Revolution of 1917 resulted in the abdication of Nicholas II of Russia As a result the Russian Provisional Government was established and soviets elected councils of workers soldiers and peasants were organized throughout the country leading to a situation of dual power Russia was proclaimed a republic in September of the same year October Revolution Edit Main article October Revolution The Provisional Government led by Socialist Revolutionary Party politician Alexander Kerensky was unable to solve the most pressing issues of the country most importantly to end the war with the Central Powers A failed military coup by General Lavr Kornilov in September 1917 led to a surge in support for the Bolshevik party who gained majorities in the soviets which until then had been controlled by the Socialist Revolutionaries Promising an end to the war and all power to the Soviets the Bolsheviks then ended dual power by suppressing the Provisional Government in late October on the eve of the Second All Russian Congress of Soviets in what would be the second Revolution of 1917 Despite the Bolsheviks seizure of power they lost to the Socialist Revolutionary Party in the 1917 Russian Constituent Assembly election and the Constituent Assembly was dissolved by the Bolsheviks The Bolsheviks soon lost the support of other far left allies such as the Left Socialist Revolutionaries after their acceptance of the terms of the Treaty of Brest Litovsk presented by Germany 14 Formation of the Red Army Edit Main article Red Army From mid 1917 onwards the Russian Army the successor organisation of the old Imperial Russian Army started to disintegrate 15 the Bolsheviks used the volunteer based Red Guards as their main military force augmented by an armed military component of the Cheka the Bolshevik state security apparatus In January 1918 after significant Bolshevik reverses in combat the future People s Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs Leon Trotsky headed the reorganization of the Red Guards into a Workers and Peasants Red Army in order to create a more effective fighting force The Bolsheviks appointed political commissars to each unit of the Red Army to maintain morale and to ensure loyalty In June 1918 when it had become apparent that a revolutionary army composed solely of workers would not suffice Trotsky instituted mandatory conscription of the rural peasantry into the Red Army 16 The Bolsheviks overcame opposition of rural Russians to Red Army conscription units by taking hostages and shooting them when necessary in order to force compliance 17 The forced conscription drive had mixed results successfully creating a larger army than the Whites but with members indifferent towards Marxist Leninist ideology 14 The Red Army also utilized former Tsarist officers as military specialists voenspetsy 18 sometimes their families were taken hostage in order to ensure their loyalty 19 At the start of the civil war former Tsarist officers formed three quarters of the Red Army officer corps 19 By its end 83 of all Red Army divisional and corps commanders were ex Tsarist soldiers 18 Anti Bolshevik movement Edit Main articles White movement Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War Pro independence movements in the Russian Civil War and Left wing uprisings against the Bolsheviks Admiral Alexander Kolchak seated and General Alfred Knox behind Kolchak observing military exercise 1919 While resistance to the Red Guards began on the very day after the Bolshevik uprising the Treaty of Brest Litovsk and the instinct of one party rule became a catalyst 20 for the formation of anti Bolshevik groups both inside and outside Russia pushing them into action against the new Soviet government A loose confederation of anti Bolshevik forces aligned against the Communist government including landowners republicans conservatives middle class citizens reactionaries pro monarchists liberals army generals non Bolshevik socialists who still had grievances and democratic reformists voluntarily united only in their opposition to Bolshevik rule Their military forces bolstered by forced conscriptions and terror 21 as well as foreign influence under the leadership of General Nikolai Yudenich Admiral Alexander Kolchak and General Anton Denikin became known as the White movement sometimes referred to as the White Army and controlled significant parts of the former Russian Empire for most of the war A Ukrainian nationalist movement was active in Ukraine during the war More significant was the emergence of an anarchist political and military movement known as the Makhnovshchina led by Nestor Makhno The Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine which counted numerous Jews and Ukrainian peasants in its ranks played a key part in halting Denikin s White Army offensive towards Moscow during 1919 later ejecting White forces from Crimea The remoteness of the Volga Region the Ural Region Siberia and the Far East was favorable for the anti Bolshevik forces and the Whites set up a number of organizations in the cities of those regions Some of the military forces were set up on the basis of clandestine officers organizations in the cities The Czechoslovak Legions had been part of the Russian Army and numbered around 30 000 troops by October 1917 They had an agreement with the new Bolshevik government to be evacuated from the Eastern Front via the port of Vladivostok to France The transport from the Eastern Front to Vladivostok slowed down in the chaos and the troops became dispersed all along the Trans Siberian Railway Under pressure from the Central Powers Trotsky ordered the disarming and arrest of the legionaries which created tensions with the Bolsheviks The Government of South Russia created by Pyotr Wrangel in Sevastopol 1920 The Western Allies armed and supported opponents of the Bolsheviks They were worried about a possible Russo German alliance the prospect of the Bolsheviks making good on their threats to default on Imperial Russia s massive foreign loans and the possibility that Communist revolutionary ideas would spread a concern shared by many Central Powers Hence many of the countries expressed their support for the Whites including the provision of troops and supplies Winston Churchill declared that Bolshevism must be strangled in its cradle 22 The British and French had supported Russia during World War I on a massive scale with war materials Allied intervention Edit Main article Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War After the treaty it looked like much of that material would fall into the hands of the Germans To meet that danger the Allies intervened with Great Britain and France sending troops into Russian ports There were violent clashes with the Bolsheviks Britain intervened in support of the White forces to defeat the Bolsheviks and prevent the spread of communism across Europe 23 Buffer states Edit The German Empire created several short lived satellite buffer states within its sphere of influence after the Treaty of Brest Litovsk the United Baltic Duchy Duchy of Courland and Semigallia Kingdom of Lithuania Kingdom of Poland 24 the Belarusian People s Republic and the Ukrainian State Following Germany s Armistice in World War I in November 1918 the states were abolished 25 26 Finland was the first republic that declared its independence from Russia in December 1917 and established itself in the ensuing Finnish Civil War from January May 1918 27 The Second Polish Republic Lithuania Latvia and Estonia formed their own armies immediately after the abolition of the Brest Litovsk Treaty and the start of the Soviet westward offensive in November 1918 28 Geography and chronology EditMain articles Southern Front of the Russian Civil War North Russia Campaign Eastern Front of the Russian Civil War Yakut Revolt and Finnish Civil War In the European part of Russia the war was fought across three main fronts the eastern the southern and the northwestern It can also be roughly split into the following periods Anti Bolshevik Volunteer Army in South Russia January 1918 The first period lasted from the Revolution until the Armistice Already on the date of the Revolution Cossack General Alexey Kaledin refused to recognize it and assumed full governmental authority in the Don region 29 where the Volunteer Army began amassing support The signing of the Treaty of Brest Litovsk also resulted in direct Allied intervention in Russia and the arming of military forces opposed to the Bolshevik government There were also many German commanders who offered support against the Bolsheviks fearing a confrontation with them was impending as well During the first period the Bolsheviks took control of Central Asia out of the hands of the Provisional Government and White Army setting up a base for the Communist Party in the Steppe and Turkestan where nearly two million Russian settlers were located 30 Russian soldiers of the anti Bolshevik Siberian Army in 1919 Most of the fighting in the first period was sporadic involved only small groups and had a fluid and rapidly shifting strategic situation Among the antagonists were the Czechoslovak Legion 31 the Poles of the 4th and 5th Rifle Divisions and the pro Bolshevik Red Latvian riflemen The second period of the war lasted from January to November 1919 At first the White armies advances from the south under Denikin the east under Kolchak and the northwest under Yudenich were successful forcing the Red Army and its allies back on all three fronts In July 1919 the Red Army suffered another reverse after a mass defection of units in the Crimea to the anarchist Insurgent Army under Nestor Makhno enabling anarchist forces to consolidate power in Ukraine Leon Trotsky soon reformed the Red Army concluding the first of two military alliances with the anarchists In June the Red Army first checked Kolchak s advance After a series of engagements assisted by an Insurgent Army offensive against White supply lines the Red Army defeated Denikin s and Yudenich s armies in October and November The third period of the war was the extended siege of the last White forces in the Crimea General Wrangel had gathered the remnants of Denikin s armies occupying much of the Crimea An attempted invasion of southern Ukraine was rebuffed by the Insurgent Army under Makhno s command Pursued into Crimea by Makhno s troops Wrangel went over to the defensive in the Crimea After an abortive move north against the Red Army Wrangel s troops were forced south by Red Army and Insurgent Army forces Wrangel and the remains of his army were evacuated to Constantinople in November 1920 Warfare EditOctober Revolution Edit Main article October Revolution European theatre of the Russian Civil War In the October Revolution the Bolshevik Party directed the Red Guard armed groups of workers and Imperial army deserters to seize control of Petrograd Saint Petersburg and immediately began the armed takeover of cities and villages throughout the former Russian Empire In January 1918 the Bolsheviks dissolved the Russian Constituent Assembly and proclaimed the Soviets workers councils as the new government of Russia Initial anti Bolshevik uprisings Edit Main articles Kerensky Krasnov uprising Junker mutiny and Volunteer Army The first attempt to regain power from the Bolsheviks was made by the Kerensky Krasnov uprising in October 1917 It was supported by the Junker Mutiny in Petrograd but was quickly put down by the Red Guard notably including the Latvian Rifle Division The initial groups that fought against the Communists were local Cossack armies that had declared their loyalty to the Provisional Government Kaledin of the Don Cossacks and General Grigory Semenov of the Siberian Cossacks were prominent among them The leading Tsarist officers of the Imperial Russian Army also started to resist In November General Mikhail Alekseev the Tsar s Chief of Staff during the First World War began to organize the Volunteer Army in Novocherkassk Volunteers of the small army were mostly officers of the old Russian army military cadets and students In December 1917 Alekseev was joined by General Lavr Kornilov Denikin and other Tsarist officers who had escaped from the jail where they had been imprisoned following the abortive Kornilov affair just before the Revolution 1 27 On 9 December the Military Revolutionary Committee in Rostov rebelled with the Bolsheviks controlling the city for five days until the Alekseev Organization supported Kaledin in recapturing the city According to Peter Kenez The operation begun on December 9 can be regarded as the beginning of the Civil War 32 Having stated in the November 1917 Declaration of Rights of Nations of Russia that any nation under imperial Russian rule should be immediately given the power of self determination the Bolsheviks had begun to usurp the power of the Provisional Government in the territories of Central Asia soon after the establishment of the Turkestan Committee in Tashkent 33 In April 1917 the Provisional Government set up the committee which was mostly made up of former Tsarist officials 34 The Bolsheviks attempted to take control of the Committee in Tashkent on 12 September 1917 but it was unsuccessful and many leaders were arrested However because the Committee lacked representation of the native population and poor Russian settlers they had to release the Bolshevik prisoners almost immediately because of a public outcry and a successful takeover of that government body took place two months later in November 35 The Leagues of Mohammedam Working People which Russian settlers and natives who had been sent to work behind the lines for the Tsarist government in 1916 formed in March 1917 had led numerous strikes in the industrial centers throughout September 1917 36 However after the Bolshevik destruction of the Provisional Government in Tashkent Muslim elites formed an autonomous government in Turkestan commonly called the Kokand autonomy or simply Kokand 37 The White Russians supported that government body which lasted several months because of Bolshevik troop isolation from Moscow 38 In January 1918 the Soviet forces under Lt Col Muravyov invaded Ukraine and invested Kiev where the Central Council of the Ukrainian People s Republic held power With the help of the Kiev Arsenal Uprising the Bolsheviks captured the city on 26 January 1 35 Peace with the Central Powers Edit Main article Treaty of Brest Litovsk Soviet delegation with Trotsky greeted by German officers at Brest Litovsk 8 January 1918 The Bolsheviks decided to immediately make peace with the Central Powers as they had promised the Russian people before the Revolution 39 Vladimir Lenin s political enemies attributed that decision to his sponsorship by the Foreign Office of Wilhelm II German Emperor offered to Lenin in hope that with a revolution Russia would withdraw from World War I That suspicion was bolstered by the German Foreign Ministry s sponsorship of Lenin s return to Petrograd 40 However after the military fiasco of the summer offensive June 1917 by the Russian Provisional Government had devastated the structure of the Russian Army it became crucial that Lenin realize the promised peace 41 Even before the failed summer offensive the Russian population was very skeptical about the continuation of the war Western socialists had promptly arrived from France and from the UK to convince the Russians to continue the fight but could not change the new pacifist mood of Russia 42 On 16 December 1917 an armistice was signed between Russia and the Central Powers in Brest Litovsk and peace talks began 1 42 As a condition for peace the proposed treaty by the Central Powers conceded huge portions of the former Russian Empire to the German Empire and the Ottoman Empire greatly upsetting nationalists and conservatives Leon Trotsky representing the Bolsheviks refused at first to sign the treaty while continuing to observe a unilateral cease fire following the policy of No war no peace 43 Therefore on 18 February 1918 the Germans began Operation Faustschlag on the Eastern Front encountering virtually no resistance in a campaign that lasted 11 days 43 Signing a formal peace treaty was the only option in the eyes of the Bolsheviks because the Russian Army was demobilized and the newly formed Red Guard could not stop the advance They also understood that the impending counterrevolutionary resistance was more dangerous than the concessions of the treaty which Lenin viewed as temporary in the light of aspirations for a world revolution The Soviets acceded to a peace treaty and the formal agreement the Treaty of Brest Litovsk was ratified on 3 March The Soviets viewed the treaty as merely a necessary and expedient means to end the war Ukraine South Russia and Caucasus 1918 Edit Main articles Ukrainian People s Republic Kiev Arsenal January Uprising Ice March 26 Baku Commissars German Caucasus Expedition Battle of Baku Central Caspian Dictatorship and Romanian military intervention in Bessarabia February 1918 article from The New York Times showing a map of the Russian Imperial territories claimed by the Ukrainian People s Republic at the time before the annexation of the Austro Hungarian lands of the West Ukrainian People s Republic In Ukraine the German Austrian Operation Faustschlag had by April 1918 removed the Bolsheviks from Ukraine 44 45 46 47 48 The German and Austro Hungarian victories in Ukraine were caused by the apathy of the locals and the inferior fighting skills of Bolsheviks troops to their Austro Hungarian and German counterparts 48 Under Soviet pressure the Volunteer Army embarked on the epic Ice March from Yekaterinodar to Kuban on 22 February 1918 where they joined with the Kuban Cossacks to mount an abortive assault on Yekaterinodar 1 29 The Soviets recaptured Rostov on the next day 1 29 Kornilov was killed in the fighting on 13 April and Denikin took over command Fighting off its pursuers without respite the army succeeded in breaking its way through back towards the Don by May where the Cossack uprising against Bolsheviks had started 32 115 118 The Baku Soviet Commune was established on 13 April Germany landed its Caucasus Expedition troops in Poti on 8 June The Ottoman Army of Islam in coalition with Azerbaijan drove them out of Baku on 26 July 1918 Subsequently the Dashanaks Right SRs and Mensheviks started negotiations with Gen Dunsterville the commander of the British troops in Persia The Bolsheviks and their Left SR allies were opposed to it but on 25 July the majority of the Soviets voted to call in the British and the Bolsheviks resigned The Baku Soviet Commune ended its existence and was replaced by the Central Caspian Dictatorship In June 1918 the Volunteer Army numbering some 9 000 men started its Second Kuban campaign capturing Yekaterinodar on 16 August followed by Armavir and Stavropol By early 1919 they controlled the Northern Caucasus 32 166 174 182 189 190 On 8 October Alekseev died On 8 January 1919 Denikin became the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces of South Russia uniting the Volunteer Army with Pyotr Krasnov s Don Army Pyotr Wrangel became Denikin s Chief of Staff 32 195 204 267 270 In December three fourths of the army was in the Northern Caucasus That included three thousand of Vladimir Liakhov s soldiers around Vladikavkaz thirteen thousand soldiers under Wrangel and Kazanovich in the center of the front Stankevich s almost three thousand men with the Don Cossacks while Vladimir May Mayevsky s three thousand were sent to the Donets basin and de Bode commanded two thousand in the Crimea 49 Eastern Russia Siberia and Far East of Russia 1918 Edit Main articles Revolt of the Czechoslovak Legion Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly and Provisional All Russian Government The revolt of the Czechoslovak Legion broke out in May 1918 and proceeded to occupy the Trans Siberian Railway from Ufa to Vladivostok Uprisings overthrew other Bolshevik towns On 7 July the western portion of the legion declared itself to be a new eastern front anticipating allied intervention According to William Henry Chamberlin Two governments emerged as a result of the first successes of the Czechs the West Siberian Commissariat and the Government of the Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly in Samara On 17 July shortly before the fall of Yekaterinburg the former Tsar Nicholas II and his family were murdered 50 6 12 91 Czechoslovak legionaries of the 8th Regiment at Nikolsk Ussuriysky killed by Bolsheviks 1918 Above them stand also members of the Czechoslovak Legion The Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries supported peasants fighting against Soviet control of food supplies 51 In May 1918 with the support of the Czechoslovak Legion they took Samara and Saratov establishing the Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly known as the Komuch By July the authority of the Komuch extended over much of the area controlled by the Czechoslovak Legion The Komuch pursued an ambivalent social policy combining democratic and socialist measures such as the institution of an eight hour working day with restorative actions such as returning both factories and land to their former owners After the fall of Kazan Vladimir Lenin called for the dispatch of Petrograd workers to the Kazan Front We must send down the maximum number of Petrograd workers 1 a few dozen leaders like Kayurov 2 a few thousand militants from the ranks After a series of reverses at the front the Bolsheviks War Commissar Trotsky instituted increasingly harsh measures in order to prevent unauthorised withdrawals desertions and mutinies in the Red Army In the field the Cheka special investigations forces termed the Special Punitive Department of the All Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combat of Counter Revolution and Sabotage or Special Punitive Brigades followed the Red Army conducting field tribunals and summary executions of soldiers and officers who deserted retreated from their positions or failed to display sufficient offensive zeal 52 53 The Cheka special investigations forces were also charged with the detection of sabotage and counter revolutionary activity by Red Army soldiers and commanders Trotsky extended the use of the death penalty to the occasional political commissar whose detachment retreated or broke in the face of the enemy 54 In August frustrated at continued reports of Red Army troops breaking under fire Trotsky authorised the formation of barrier troops stationed behind unreliable Red Army units and given orders to shoot anyone withdrawing from the battle line without authorisation 55 Admiral Alexander Kolchak reviewing the troops 1919 In September 1918 the Komuch the Siberian Provisional Government and other anti Bolshevik Russians agreed during the State Meeting in Ufa to form a new Provisional All Russian Government in Omsk headed by a Directory of five two Socialist Revolutionaries Nikolai Avksentiev and Vladimir Zenzinov the Kadet lawyer V A Vinogradov Siberian Premier Vologodskii and General Vasily Boldyrev 50 By the fall of 1918 anti Bolshevik White forces in the east included the People s Army Komuch the Siberian Army of the Siberian Provisional Government and insurgent Cossack units of Orenburg Ural Siberia Semirechye Baikal Amur and Ussuri Cossacks nominally under the orders of Gen V G Boldyrev Commander in Chief appointed by the Ufa Directorate On the Volga Col Kappel s White detachment captured Kazan on 7 August but the Reds re captured the city on 8 September 1918 following a counteroffensive On the 11th Simbirsk fell and on 8 October Samara The Whites fell back eastwards to Ufa and Orenburg In Omsk the Russian Provisional Government quickly came under the influence and later the dominance of its new War Minister Rear Admiral Kolchak On 18 November a coup d etat established Kolchak as dictator Two members of the Directory were arrested and subsequently deported while Kolchak was proclaimed Supreme Ruler and Commander in chief of all land and naval forces of Russia 50 177 178 By mid December 1918 White armies had to leave Ufa but they balanced that failure with a successful drive towards Perm which they took on 24 December Central Asia 1918 Edit London Geographical Institute s 1919 map of Europe after the treaties of Brest Litovsk and Batum and before the treaties of Tartu Kars and Riga In February 1918 the Red Army overthrew the White Russian supported Kokand autonomy of Turkestan 56 Although that move seemed to solidify Bolshevik power in Central Asia more troubles soon arose for the Red Army as the Allied Forces began to intervene British support of the White Army provided the greatest threat to the Red Army in Central Asia during 1918 Britain sent three prominent military leaders to the area One was Lieutenant Colonel Frederick Marshman Baile who recorded a mission to Tashkent from where the Bolsheviks forced him to flee Another was General Wilfrid Malleson leading the Malleson Mission who assisted the Mensheviks in Ashkhabad now the capital of Turkmenistan with a small Anglo Indian force However he failed to gain control of Tashkent Bukhara and Khiva The third was Major General Dunsterville who was driven out by the Bolsheviks of Central Asia only a month after his arrival in August 1918 57 Despite setbacks because of British invasions during 1918 the Bolsheviks continued to make progress in bringing the Central Asian population under their influence The first regional congress of the Russian Communist Party convened in the city of Tashkent in June 1918 in order to build support for a local Bolshevik Party 58 Left SR uprising Edit Main articles Left SR uprising and Yaroslavl Uprising On 6 July 1918 two Left Socialist Revolutionaries and Cheka employees Yakov Blumkin and Nikolai Andreyev assassinated the German ambassador Count Mirbach In Moscow a Left SR uprising was put down by the Bolsheviks mass arrests of Socialist Revolutionaries followed and executions became more frequent Chamberlin noted The time of relative leniency toward former fellow revolutionists was over The Left Socialists Revolutionaries of course were no longer tolerated as members of the Soviets from this time the Soviet regime became a pure and undiluted dictatorship of the Communist Party Similarly Boris Savinkov s surprise attacks were suppressed with many of the conspirators being executed as Mass Red Terror became a reality 50 50 59 Estonia Latvia and Petrograd Edit Main articles Estonian War of Independence Latvian War of Independence and Battle of Petrograd Estonia cleared its territory of the Red Army by January 1919 59 Baltic German volunteers captured Riga from the Red Latvian Riflemen on 22 May but the Estonian 3rd Division defeated the Baltic Germans a month later aiding the establishment of the Republic of Latvia 60 General Nikolai Yudenich That rendered possible another threat to the Red Army from General Yudenich who had spent the summer organizing the Northwestern Army in Estonia with local and British support In October 1919 he tried to capture Petrograd in a sudden assault with a force of around 20 000 men The attack was well executed using night attacks and lightning cavalry maneuvers to turn the flanks of the defending Red Army Yudenich also had six British tanks which caused panic whenever they appeared The Allies gave large quantities of aid to Yudenich but he complained of receiving insufficient support By 19 October Yudenich s troops had reached the outskirts of the city Some members of the Bolshevik central committee in Moscow were willing to give up Petrograd but Trotsky refused to accept the loss of the city and personally organized its defenses Trotsky himself declared It is impossible for a little army of 15 000 ex officers to master a working class capital of 700 000 inhabitants He settled on a strategy of urban defense proclaiming that the city would defend itself on its own ground and that the White Army would be lost in a labyrinth of fortified streets and there meet its grave 61 Trotsky armed all available workers men and women ordering the transfer of military forces from Moscow Within a few weeks the Red Army defending Petrograd had tripled in size and outnumbered Yudenich three to one Yudenich short of supplies then decided to call off the siege of the city and withdrew He repeatedly asked permission to withdraw his army across the border to Estonia However units retreating across the border were disarmed and interned by orders of the Estonian government which had entered into peace negotiations with the Soviet Government on 16 September and had been informed by the Soviet authorities of their 6 November decision that if the White Army was allowed to retreat into Estonia it would be pursued across the border by the Reds 62 In fact the Reds attacked Estonian army positions and fighting continued until a ceasefire went into effect on 3 January 1920 After the Treaty of Tartu most of Yudenich s soldiers went into exile Former Imperial Russian and then Finnish General Mannerheim planned an intervention to help the Whites in Russia capture Petrograd However he did not gain the necessary support for the endeavour Lenin considered it completely certain that the slightest aid from Finland would have determined the fate of the city Northern Russia 1919 Edit Main article North Russia intervention The British occupied Murmansk and alongside the Americans seized Arkhangelsk With the retreat of Kolchak in Siberia they pulled their troops out of the cities before the winter trapped them in the port The remaining White forces under Yevgeny Miller evacuated the region in February 1920 63 Siberia 1919 Edit At the beginning of March 1919 the general offensive of the Whites on the eastern front began Ufa was retaken on 13 March by mid April the White Army stopped at the Glazov Chistopol Bugulma Buguruslan Sharlyk line Reds started their counteroffensive against Kolchak s forces at the end of April The Red 5th Army led by the capable commander Tukhachevsky captured Elabuga on 26 May Sarapul on 2 June and Izevsk on the 7th and continued to push forward Both sides had victories and losses but by the middle of summer the Red Army was larger than the White Army and had managed to recapture territory previously lost 64 Following the abortive offensive at Chelyabinsk the White armies withdrew beyond the Tobol In September 1919 a White offensive was launched against the Tobol front the last attempt to change the course of events However on 14 October the Reds counterattacked and thus began the uninterrupted retreat of the Whites to the east On 14 November 1919 the Red Army captured Omsk 65 Adm Kolchak lost control of his government shortly after the defeat White Army forces in Siberia essentially had ceased to exist by December Retreat of the eastern front by White armies lasted three months until mid February 1920 when the survivors after crossing Lake Baikal reached Chita area and joined Ataman Semenov s forces South Russia 1919 Edit White propaganda poster For united Russia representing the Bolsheviks as a fallen communist dragon and the White Cause as a crusading knight The Cossacks had been unable to organise and capitalise on their successes at the end of 1918 By 1919 they had begun to run short of supplies Consequently when the Soviet counteroffensive began in January 1919 under the Bolshevik leader Antonov Ovseenko the Cossack forces rapidly fell apart The Red Army captured Kiev on 3 February 1919 66 Denikin s military strength continued to grow in 1919 with significant munitions supplied by the British In January Denikin s Armed Forces of South Russia AFSR completed the elimination of Red forces in the northern Caucasus and moved north in an effort to protect the Don district 49 20 35 On 18 December 1918 French forces landed in Odessa and then the Crimea but evacuated Odessa on 6 April 1919 and the Crimea by the end of the month According to Chamberlin But France gave far less practical aid to the Whites than did England its sole independent venture in intervention at Odessa ended in a complete fiasco 50 151 165 167 Denikin then reorganized the Armed Forces of South Russia under the leadership of Vladimir May Mayevsky Vladimir Sidorin and Pyotr Wrangel On 22 May Wrangel s Caucasian army defeated the 10th Army RSFSR in the battle for Velikoknyazheskaya and then captured Tsaritsyn on 1 July Sidorin advanced north toward Voronezh increasing his army s strength in the process On 25 June May Mayevsky captured Kharkov and then Ekaterinoslav on 30 June which forced the Reds to abandon Crimea On 3 July Denikin issued his Moscow directive in which his armies would converge on Moscow 49 37 41 Although Britain had withdrawn its own troops from the theatre it continued to give significant military aid money weapons food ammunition and some military advisers to the White Armies during 1919 Major Ewen Cameron Bruce of the British Army had volunteered to command a British tank mission assisting the White Army He was awarded the Distinguished Service Order 67 for his bravery during the June 1919 Battle of Tsaritsyn for single handedly storming and capturing the fortified city of Tsaritsyn under heavy shell fire in a single tank which led to the capture of over 40 000 prisoners 68 The fall of Tsaritsyn is viewed as one of the key battles of the Russian Civil War and greatly helped the White Russian cause 68 The notable historian Sir Basil Henry Liddell Hart comments that Bruce s tank action during the battle is to be seen as one of the most remarkable feats in the whole history of the Tank Corps 69 On 14 August the Bolsheviks launched their Southern Front counteroffensive After six weeks of heavy fighting the counteroffensive failed and Denikin was able to capture more territory By November White Forces had reached the Zbruch the Ukrainian Polish border 49 43 154 General Pyotr Wrangel in Tsaritsyn 15 October 1919 Denikin s forces constituted a real threat and for a time threatened to reach Moscow The Red Army stretched thin by fighting on all fronts was forced out of Kiev on 30 August Kursk and Orel were taken on 20 September and 14 October respectively The latter only 205 miles 330 km from Moscow was the closest the AFSR would come to its target 70 The Cossack Don Army under the command of General Vladimir Sidorin continued north towards Voronezh but Semyon Budyonny s cavalrymen defeated them there on 24 October That allowed the Red Army to cross the Don River threatening to split the Don and Volunteer Armies Fierce fighting took place at the key rail junction of Kastornoye which was taken on 15 November Kursk was retaken two days later 71 Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge a famous Bolshevik Constructivist propaganda poster by artist El Lissitsky uses abstract symbolism to depict the defeat of the Whites by the Red Army Kenez states In October Denikin ruled more than forty million people and controlled the economically most valuable parts of the Russian Empire Yet The White armies which had fought victoriously during the summer and early fall fell back in disorder in November and December Denikin s front line was overstretched while his reserves dealt with Makhno s anarchists in the rear Between September and October the Reds mobilized one hundred thousand new soldiers and adopted the Trotsky Vatsetis strategy with the Ninth and Tenth armies forming V I Shorin s Southeastern Front between Tsaritsyn and Bobrov while the Eighth Twelfth Thirteenth and Fourteenth armies formed A I Egorov s Southern Front between Zhitomir and Bobrov Sergey Kamenev was in overall command of the two fronts On Denikin s left was Abram Dragomirov while in his center was Vladimir May Mayevsky s Volunteer Army Vladimir Sidorin s Don Cossacks were further east with Pyotr Wrangel s Caucasian army at Tsaritsyn and an additional was in the Northern Caucasus attempting to capture Astrakhan On 20 October Mai Maevskii was forced to evacuate Orel during the Orel Kursk operation On 24 October Semyon Budyonny captured Voronezh and Kursk on 15 November during the Voronezh Kastornoye operation 1919 On 6 January the Reds reached the Black Sea at Mariupol and Taganrog and On 9 January they reached Rostov According to Kenez The Whites had now lost all the territories which they had conquered in 1919 and held approximately the same area in which they had started two years before 49 213 223 Central Asia 1919 Edit By February 1919 the British government had pulled its military forces out of Central Asia 72 Despite the success for the Red Army the White Army s assaults in European Russia and other areas broke communication between Moscow and Tashkent For a time Central Asia was completely cut off from Red Army forces in Siberia 73 Although the communication failure weakened the Red Army the Bolsheviks continued their efforts to gain support for the Bolshevik Party in Central Asia by holding a second regional conference in March During the conference a regional bureau of Muslim organisations of the Russian Bolshevik Party was formed The Bolshevik Party continued to try to gain support among the native population by giving it the impression of better representation for the Central Asian population and throughout the end of the year could maintain harmony with the Central Asian people 74 Communication difficulties with Red Army forces in Siberia and European Russia ceased to be a problem by mid November 1919 Red Army successes north of Central Asia caused communication with Moscow to be re established and the Bolsheviks to claim victory over the White Army in Turkestan 73 In the Ural Guryev operation of 1919 1920 the Red Turkestan Front defeated the Ural Army During winter 1920 Ural Cossacks and their families totaling about 15 000 people headed south along the eastern coast of the Caspian Sea towards Fort Alexandrovsk Only a few hundred of them reached Persia in June 1920 75 The Orenburg Independent Army was formed from Orenburg Cossacks and others troops who rebelled against the Bolsheviks During the winter 1919 20 the Orenburg Army retreated to Semirechye in what is known as the Starving March as half of the participants perished 76 In March 1920 her remnants crossed the border into the Northwestern region of China South Russia Ukraine and Kronstadt 1920 21 Edit Victims of the Russian famine of 1921 At the beginning of 1920 Denikin was reduced to defending Novorossia the Crimean peninsula and the Northern Caucasus On 26 January the Caucasian army retreated beyond the Manych On 7 February the Reds occupied Odessa but then Makhno started fighting the Fourteenth Red Army On 20 February Denikin succeeded in recapturing Rostov his last victory before giving it up soon after 49 236 239 By the beginning of 1920 the main body of the Armed Forces of South Russia was rapidly retreating towards the Don to Rostov Denikin hoped to hold the crossings of the Don then rest and reform his troops but the White Army was not able to hold the Don area and at the end of February 1920 started a retreat across Kuban towards Novorossiysk Slipshod evacuation of Novorossiysk proved to be a dark event for the White Army Russian and Allied ships evacuated about 40 000 of Denikin s men from Novorossiysk to the Crimea without horses or any heavy equipment while about 20 000 men were left behind and either dispersed or captured by the Red Army Following the disastrous Novorossiysk evacuation Denikin stepped down and the military council elected Wrangel as the new Commander in Chief of the White Army He was able to restore order to the dispirited troops and reshape an army that could fight as a regular force again It remained an organized force in the Crimea throughout 1920 77 Tambov Rebellion was one of the largest and best organised peasant rebellions challenging the Bolshevik regime After Moscow s Bolshevik government signed a military and political alliance with Nestor Makhno and the Ukrainian anarchists the Insurgent Army attacked and defeated several regiments of Wrangel s troops in southern Ukraine forcing him to retreat before he could capture that year s grain harvest 78 Stymied in his efforts to consolidate his hold Wrangel then attacked north in an attempt to take advantage of recent Red Army defeats at the close of the Polish Soviet War of 1919 1920 The Red Army eventually halted the offensive and Wrangel s troops had to retreat to Crimea in November 1920 pursued by both the Red and Black cavalry and infantry Wrangel s fleet evacuated him and his army to Constantinople on 14 November 1920 ending the struggle of Reds and Whites in Southern Russia 79 After the defeat of Wrangel the Red Army immediately repudiated its 1920 treaty of alliance with Nestor Makhno and attacked the anarchist Insurgent Army the campaign to liquidate Makhno and the Ukrainian anarchists began with an attempted assassination of Makhno by Cheka agents Anger at continued repression by the Bolshevik Communist government and at its liberal use of the Cheka to put down anarchist elements led to a naval mutiny at Kronstadt in March 1921 followed by peasant revolts Red Army attacks on the anarchist forces and their sympathisers increased in ferocity throughout 1921 80 Siberia and the Far East 1920 22 Edit Main article Far Eastern Front in the Russian Civil War In Siberia Admiral Kolchak s army had disintegrated He himself gave up command after the loss of Omsk and designated Gen Grigory Semyonov as the new leader of the White Army in Siberia Not long afterward Kolchak was arrested by the disaffected Czechoslovak Corps as he traveled towards Irkutsk without the protection of the army and was turned over to the socialist Political Centre in Irkutsk Six days later the regime was replaced by a Bolshevik dominated Military Revolutionary Committee On 6 7 February Kolchak and his prime minister Victor Pepelyaev were shot and their bodies were thrown through the ice of the frozen Angara River just before the arrival of the White Army in the area 1 319 21 Remnants of Kolchak s army reached Transbaikalia and joined Semyonov s troops forming the Far Eastern army With the support of the Japanese army it was able to hold Chita but after the withdrawal of Japanese soldiers from Transbaikalia Semenov s position became untenable and in November 1920 he was driven by the Red Army from Transbaikalia and took refuge in China The Japanese who had plans to annex the Amur Krai finally pulled their troops out as Bolshevik forces gradually asserted control over the Russian Far East On 25 October 1922 Vladivostok fell to the Red Army and the Provisional Priamur Government was extinguished Aftermath EditEnsuing rebellion Edit In Central Asia Red Army troops continued to face resistance into 1923 where basmachi armed bands of Islamic guerrillas had formed to fight the Bolshevik takeover The Soviets engaged non Russian peoples in Central Asia like Magaza Masanchi commander of the Dungan Cavalry Regiment to fight against the Basmachis The Communist Party did not completely dismantle the group until 1934 81 General Anatoly Pepelyayev continued armed resistance in the Ayano Maysky District until June 1923 The regions of Kamchatka and Northern Sakhalin remained under Japanese occupation until their treaty with the Soviet Union in 1925 when their forces were finally withdrawn Casualties Edit Street children during the Russian Civil WarSee also Red Terror Russia and White Terror Russia The results of the civil war were momentous Soviet demographer Boris Urlanis estimated the total number of men killed in action in the Civil War and Polish Soviet War as 300 000 125 000 in the Red Army 175 500 White armies and Poles and the total number of military personnel dead from disease on both sides as 450 000 82 Boris Sennikov estimated the total losses among the population of Tambov region in 1920 to 1922 resulting from the war executions and imprisonment in concentration camps as approximately 240 000 83 Refugees on flatcars As many as 10 million lives were lost as a result of the Russian Civil War and the overwhelming majority of these were civilian casualties 84 During the Red Terror estimates of Cheka executions range from 12 733 to 1 7 million William Henry Chamberlin suspected that there were about 50 000 85 Evan Mawdsley suspected that there were more than 12 733 and less than 200 000 1 286 Some sources claimed at least 250 000 summary executions of enemies of the people with estimates reaching above a million 86 87 88 89 More modest estimates put the numbers executed by the Bolsheviks between December 1917 and February 1922 at around 28 000 per year with roughly 10 000 executions during the Red Terror 90 Some 300 000 500 000 Cossacks were killed or deported during Decossackization out of a population of around three million 91 An estimated 100 000 Jews were killed in Ukraine 92 Punitive organs of the All Great Don Cossack Host sentenced 25 000 people to death between May 1918 and January 1919 93 Kolchak s government shot 25 000 people in Ekaterinburg province alone 94 The White Terror as it would become known killed about 300 000 people in total 95 At the end of the Civil War the Russian SFSR was exhausted and near ruin The droughts of 1920 and 1921 as well as the 1921 famine worsened the disaster still further killing roughly 5 million people Disease had reached pandemic proportions with 3 000 000 dying of typhus throughout the war Millions more also died of widespread starvation wholesale massacres by both sides and pogroms against Jews in Ukraine and southern Russia By 1922 there were at least 7 000 000 street children in Russia as a result of nearly ten years of devastation from World War I and the civil war 96 Another one to two million people known as the White emigres fled Russia many with General Wrangel some through the Far East and others west into the newly independent Baltic countries The emigres included a large percentage of the educated and skilled population of Russia The Russian economy was devastated by the war with factories and bridges destroyed cattle and raw materials pillaged mines flooded and machines damaged The industrial production value descended to one seventh of the value of 1913 and agriculture to one third According to Pravda The workers of the towns and some of the villages choke in the throes of hunger The railways barely crawl The houses are crumbling The towns are full of refuse Epidemics spread and death strikes industry is ruined citation needed It is estimated that the total output of mines and factories in 1921 had fallen to 20 of the pre World War level and many crucial items experienced an even more drastic decline For example cotton production fell to 5 and iron to 2 of pre war levels War Communism saved the Soviet government during the Civil War but much of the Russian economy had ground to a standstill Some peasants responded to requisitions by refusing to till the land By 1921 cultivated land had shrunk to 62 of the pre war area and the harvest yield was only about 37 of normal The number of horses declined from 35 million in 1916 to 24 million in 1920 and cattle from 58 to 37 million The exchange rate with the US dollar declined from two roubles in 1914 to 1 200 Rbls in 1920 With the end of the war the Communist Party no longer faced an acute military threat to its existence and power However the perceived threat of another intervention combined with the failure of socialist revolutions in other countries most notably the German Revolution contributed to the continued militarisation of Soviet society Although Russia experienced extremely rapid economic growth 97 in the 1930s the combined effect of World War I and the Civil War left a lasting scar on Russian society and had permanent effects on the development of the Soviet Union In fiction EditLiterature Edit The Road to Calvary 1922 41 by Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy Chapaev 1923 by Dmitri Furmanov The Iron Flood 1924 by Alexander Serafimovich Red Cavalry 1926 by Isaac Babel The Rout 1927 by Alexander Fadeyev Conquered City 1932 by Victor Serge Futility 1922 by William Gerhardie How the Steel Was Tempered 1934 by Nikolai Ostrovsky Optimistic Tragedy 1934 by Vsevolod Vishnevsky And Quiet Flows the Don 1928 1940 by Mikhail Sholokhov The Don Flows Home to the Sea 1940 by Mikhail Sholokhov Doctor Zhivago 1957 by Boris Pasternak The White Guard 1966 by Mikhail Bulgakov Byzantium Endures 1981 by Michael Moorcock Chevengur written in 1927 first published in 1988 in the USSR by Andrei Platonov Fall of Giants 2010 by Ken Follett A Splendid Little War 2012 by Derek Robinson novelist Film Edit Arsenal 1928 Storm Over Asia 1928 Chapaev 1934 Thirteen 1936 directed by Mikhail Romm We Are from Kronstadt 1936 directed by Yefim Dzigan Knight Without Armour 1937 The Year 1919 1938 directed by Ilya Trauberg The Baltic Marines 1939 directed by A Faintsimmer Shchors 1939 directed by Dovzhenko Pavel Korchagin 1956 directed by A Alov and V Naumov The Forty First 1956 directed by Grigori Chukhrai The Communist film 1957 directed by Yuli Raizman And Quiet Flows the Don 1958 directed by Sergei Gerasimov Doctor Zhivago 1965 directed by David Lean The Elusive Avengers 1966 The Red and the White 1967 White Sun of the Desert 1970 The Flight 1970 directed by A Alov and V Naumov Reds 1981 directed by Warren Beatty Corto Maltese in Siberia 2002 Nine Lives of Nestor Makhno 2005 2007 Admiral 2008 Sunstroke 2014 directed by Nikita MikhalkovSee also Edit Soviet Union portalBibliography of the Russian Revolution and Civil War Index of articles related to the Russian Revolution and Civil War Nikolayevsk incident Revolutionary Mass Festivals Timeline of the Russian Civil War Allied Powers intervention in the Russian Civil WarNotes Edit Soviet Polish War De facto deposed after the Bolshevik Coup of November 1917 formally abolished in January 1918 after the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly Finnish Civil War Polish Soviet War Basmachi movement Aligned with the Bolsheviks until March 1918 when they fell out over the Treaty of Brest Litovsk Most Left SRs opposed the Bolsheviks afterward but a minority of Left SRs remained allied to the Bolsheviks for years after Aligned with the Bolsheviks until 1919 opposed after Aligned with the Bolsheviks until 1920 opposed after Japan also stayed in North Sakhalin until 1925 Official allegiance to the Russian StateUnofficial allegiance to the German Empire The main phase ended on 25 October 1922 Revolt against the Bolsheviks continued in Central Asia and the Far East through the 1920s and 1930s The Red Army peaked in October 1920 with 5 498 000 2 587 000 in reserves 391 000 in labor armies 159 000 on the front and 1 780 000 drawing rations 683 000 active340 000 reserve There were an additional 6 242 926 hospitalizations from sickness References EditCitations Edit a b c d e f g h i j Mawdsley Evan 2007 The Russian Civil War New York Pegasus Books ISBN 9781681770093 Poslednie boi na Dalnem Vostoke M Centrpoligraf 2005 a b Bullock David 2008 The Russian Civil War 1918 22 Oxford Osprey Publishing ISBN 978 1 84603 271 4 Archived from the original on 28 July 2020 Retrieved 26 December 2017 Erickson 1984 p 763 Belash Victor amp Belash Aleksandr Dorogi Nestora Makhno p 340 Damien Wright Churchill s Secret War with Lenin British and Commonwealth Military Intervention in the Russian Civil War 1918 20 Solihull UK 2017 pp 394 526 528 530 535 Clifford Kinvig Churchill s Crusade The British Invasion of Russia 1918 1920 London 2006 ISBN 1 85285 477 4 p 297 Timothy Winegard The First World Oil War University of Toronto Press 2016 p 229 Smele Jon 2015 The Russian Civil Wars 1916 1926 ten years that shook the world New York p 160 ISBN 9780190613211 Krivosheev 1997 p 7 38 Smele Jon 2015 The Russian Civil Wars 1916 1926 ten years that shook the world New York p 160 ISBN 9780190613211 Damien Wright Churchill s Secret War with Lenin British and Commonwealth Military Intervention in the Russian Civil War 1918 20 Solihull UK 2017 pp 490 492 498 500 504 Clifford Kinvig Churchill s Crusade The British Invasion of Russia 1918 1920 London 2006 ISBN 1 85285 477 4 pp 289 315 Timothy Winegard The First World Oil War University of Toronto Press 2016 p 208 Malleson Mission Casualties Eidintas Zalys amp Senn 1999 p 30 Russian Civil War Archived 26 August 2009 at the Wayback Machine Encyclopaedia Britannica Online 2012 Russian Civil War Causes Outcome and Effects Encyclopedia Britannica Archived from the original on 22 November 2019 Retrieved 7 August 2020 a b Stone David R 2011 Russian Civil War 1917 1920 In Martel Gordon ed The Encyclopedia of War Blackwell Publishing Ltd pp wbeow533 doi 10 1002 9781444338232 wbeow533 ISBN 978 1 4051 9037 4 S2CID 153317860 Calder 1976 p 166 the Russian Army disintegrated after the failure of the Galician offensive in July 1917 Read 1996 p 237 By 1920 77 of the Red Army s enlisted ranks were peasant conscripts Williams Beryl The Russian Revolution 1917 1921 Blackwell Publishing Ltd 1987 ISBN 978 0 631 15083 1 Typically men of conscriptible age 17 to 40 years old in a village would vanish when Red Army draft units approached The taking of hostages and a few summary executions usually brought the men back a b Overy 2004 p 446 By the end of the civil war one third of all Red Army officers were ex Tsarist voenspetsy a b Williams Beryl The Russian Revolution 1917 1921 Blackwell Publishing Ltd 1987 ISBN 978 0 631 15083 1 Thompson 1996 p 159 Figes 1997 p 656 To mobilize the peasants Kolchak s army resorted increasingly to terror There was no effective local administration to enforce the conscription in any other way and in any case the Whites world view ruled out the need to persuade the peasants Cover Story Churchill s Greatness Archived 2006 10 04 at the Wayback Machine Interview with Jeffrey Wallin The Churchill Centre Howard Fuller Great Britain and Russia s Civil War The Necessity for a Definite and Coherent Policy Journal of Slavic Military Studies 32 4 2019 553 559 Keith Bullivant Geoffrey J Giles and Walter Pape 1999 Germany and Eastern Europe Cultural Identity and Cultural Differences Rodopi pp 28 29 ISBN 90 420 0678 1 Mieczyslaw B Biskupski War and the Diplomacy of Polish Independence 1914 18 Polish Review 1990 5 17 online Archived 27 January 2020 at the Wayback Machine Timothy Snyder The Reconstruction of Nations Poland Ukraine Lithuania Belarus 1569 1999 Yale UP 2004 Kirby D G 1978 Revolutionary ferment in Finland and the origins of the civil war 1917 1918 Scandinavian Economic History Review 26 15 35 doi 10 1080 03585522 1978 10407894 Anatol Lieven The Baltic revolution Estonia Latvia Lithuania and the path to independence Yale UP 1993 pp 54 61 excerpt Archived 16 March 2021 at the Wayback Machine Kaledin Aleksej Maksimovich A biography of Kaledin in Russian Archived from the original on 8 November 2017 Retrieved 24 February 2008 Wheeler 1964 p 103 Ltd Not Panicking h2g2 The Czech Legion Edited Entry h2g2 com Archived from the original on 19 July 2012 Retrieved 29 October 2020 a b c d Kenez Peter 2004 Red Attack White Resistance Civil War in South Russia 1918 Washington DC New Academia Publishing pp 64 67 ISBN 9780974493442 Coates amp Coates 1951 p 72 Wheeler 1964 p 104 Coates amp Coates 1951 p 70 Coates amp Coates 1951 pp 68 69 Coates amp Coates 1951 p 74 Allworth 1967 p 226 Figes 1997 p 258quotes such comments from the peasant soldiers during the first weeks of the war We have talked it over among ourselves if the Germans want payment it would be better to pay ten roubles a head than to kill people Or Is it not all the same what Tsar we live under It cannot be worse under the German one Or Let them go and fight themselves Wait a while we will settle accounts with you Or What devil has brought this war on us We are butting into other people s business Vladimir Lenin Spartacus Educational Archived from the original on 10 August 2020 Retrieved 29 October 2020 Figes 1997 p 419 It was partly a case of the usual military failings units had been sent into battle without machine guns untrained soldiers had been ordered to engage in complex maneuvers using hand grenades and ended up throwing them without first pulling the pins Figes 1997 p 412 This new civic patriotism did not extend beyond the urban middle classes although the leaders of the Provisional Government deluded themselves that it did a b Smith amp Tucker 2014 pp 554 555 Ukraine World War I and the struggle for independence Encyclopaedia Britannica Archived from the original on 15 June 2008 Retrieved 30 January 2008 in Ukrainian 100 years ago Bakhmut and the rest of Donbas liberated Archived 1 May 2019 at the Wayback Machine Ukrayinska Pravda 18 April 2018 Tynchenko Yaros 23 March 2018 The Ukrainian Navy and the Crimean Issue in 1917 18 The Ukrainian Week archived from the original on 11 November 2019 retrieved 14 October 2018 Germany Takes Control of Crimea Archived 30 September 2019 at the Wayback Machine New York Herald 18 May 1918 a b War Without Fronts Atamans and Commissars in Ukraine 1917 1919 Archived 3 April 2019 at the Wayback Machine by Mikhail Akulov Harvard University August 2013 page 102 and 103 a b c d e f Kenez Peter 2004 Red Advance White Defeat Civil War in South Russia 1919 1920 Washington DC New Academia Publishing pp 28 29 ISBN 9780974493459 a b c d e Chamberlin William 1935 The Russian Revolution 1917 1921 Volume Two New York The Macmillan Company pp 20 21 Muldoon Amy Workers Organizations in the Russian Revolution International Socialist Review Archived from the original on 21 February 2018 Retrieved 20 February 2018 Chamberlin 1987 p 31Frequently the deserters families were taken hostage to force a surrender a portion were customarily executed as an example to the others Daniels 1993 p 70 Volkogonov 1996 p 175 Volkogonov 1996 p 180 By December 1918 Trotsky had ordered the formation of special detachments to serve as blocking units throughout the Red Army Rakowska Harmstone 1970 p 19 Coates amp Coates 1951 p 75 Allworth 1967 p 232 Baltic War of Liberation Archived 8 October 2014 at the Wayback Machine Encyclop dia Britannica Generalkommando VI Reservekorps Axis History Archived from the original on 4 March 2016 Retrieved 11 April 2012 Williams Beryl The Russian Revolution 1917 1921 Blackwell Publishing 1987 ISBN 978 0 631 15083 1 ISBN 0 631 15083 8 Rosenthal 2006 p 516 Ian C D Moffat The Allies Act Murmansk and Archangel in Ian C D Moffat ed The Allied Intervention in Russia 1918 1920 Palgrave Macmillan 2015 68 82 Jonathan D Smele Civil war in Siberia the anti Bolshevik government of Admiral Kolchak 1918 1920 Cambridge UP 2006 Bolsheviki Grain Near Petrograd New York Tribune Washington DC Library of Congress 15 November 1919 p 4 Archived from the original on 12 October 2012 Retrieved 10 September 2010 Peter Kenez Civil war in South Russia 1919 1920 The defeat of the whites U of California Press 1977 Distinguished Service Order citation for Bruce in the 1920 London Gazette PDF a b Kinvig 2006 p 225 Liddell Hart Basil The Tanks The History Of The Royal Tank Regiment And Its Predecessors Heavy Branch Machine Gun Corps Tank Corps And Royal Tank Corps 1914 1945 Vol I Cassell 1959 p 211 Kenez 1977 p 44 Kenez 1977 p 218 Allworth 1967 p 231 a b Coates amp Coates 1951 p 76 Allworth 1967 pp 232 233 Smele Jonathan D 2015 The Russian Civil Wars 1916 1926 Hurst amp Company London p 139 ISBN 978 1 84904 721 0 Smele Jonathan D 2015 Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars 1916 1926 Rowman amp Littlefield Publishers pp 1082 1083 ISBN 978 1 4422 5281 3 Archived from the original on 19 July 2020 Retrieved 23 September 2019 Viktor G Bortnevski White Administration and White Terror the Denikin Period Russian Review 52 3 1993 354 366 online Archived 30 September 2020 at the Wayback Machine Berland Pierre Makhno Le Temps 28 August 1934 In addition to supplying White Army forces and their sympathizers with food a successful seizure of the 1920 Ukrainian grain harvest would have had a devastating effect on food supplies to Bolshevik held cities while depriving both Red Army and Ukrainian Insurgent Army troops of their usual bread rations Kenez Civil War in South Russia 1919 1920 1977 Peter C Mentzel Chaos and Utopia The Anarchists in the Russian Revolution and Civil War Independent Review 22 2 Fall 2017 173 181 available at https www independent org pdf tir tir 22 2 03 mentzel pdf Archived 29 February 2020 at the Wayback Machine and Alexandre Skirda Nestor Makhno Anarchy s Cossack The Struggle for Free Soviets in the Ukraine 1917 1921 Chico CA AK Press 2004 ISBN 9781902593685 Wheeler 1964 p 107 Urlanis B Wars and Population Moscow Progress publishers 1971 Sennikov B V 2004 Tambov rebellion and liquidation of peasants in Russia Archived 2019 03 30 at the Wayback Machine Moscow Posev In Russian ISBN 5 85824 152 2 Russian Civil War Foreign intervention Britannica www britannica com Retrieved 31 January 2023 Chamberlin 1987 p 75 Stewart Smith D G The Defeat of Communism London Ludgate Press Ltd 1964 Rummel Rudolph Lethal Politics Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1917 Archived 24 September 2015 at the Wayback Machine 1990 Andrew amp Mitrokhin 1999 p 28 Overy 2004 p 180 Ryan 2012 pp 2 114 Gellately 2007 pp 70 71 Kenez Peter Pipe Richard Pipes Richard 1991 The Prosecution of Soviet History A Critique of Richard Pipes The Russian Revolution Russian Review 50 3 345 51 doi 10 2307 131078 JSTOR 131078 Holquist 2002 p 164 Kolchakovshina in Russian RU Cult Info Archived from the original on 10 May 2005 a href Template Cite journal html title Template Cite journal cite journal a Cite journal requires journal help Erlihman Vadim 2004 Poteri narodonaseleniya v XX veke Izdatelskij dom Russkaya panorama ISBN 5931651071 And Now My Soul Is Hardened Abandoned Children in Soviet Russia 1918 1930 Thomas J Hegarty Canadian Slavonic Papers The Soviet Union GDP growth 26 March 2016 Archived from the original on 17 May 2020 Bibliography Edit See also Bibliography of the Russian Revolution and Civil War Allworth Edward 1967 Central Asia A Century of Russian Rule New York Columbia University Press OCLC 396652 Andrew Christopher Mitrokhin Vasili 1999 The Sword and the Shield The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB New York Basic Books p 28 ISBN 978 0465003129 kgb cheka executions probably numbered as many as 250 000 Bullock David 2008 The Russian Civil War 1918 22 Oxford Osprey Publishing ISBN 978 1 84603 271 4 Archived from the original on 28 July 2020 Retrieved 26 December 2017 Calder Kenneth J 1976 Britain and the Origins of the New Europe 1914 1918 International Studies Cambridge Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 0521208970 Retrieved 6 October 2017 Chamberlin William Henry 1987 The Russian Revolution Volume II 1918 1921 From the Civil War to the Consolidation of Power Princeton NJ Princeton University Press ISBN 978 1400858705 Archived from the original on 27 December 2017 Retrieved 27 December 2017 via Project MUSE Coates W P Coates Zelda K 1951 Soviets in Central Asia New York Philosophical Library OCLC 1533874 Daniels Robert V 1993 A Documentary History of Communism in Russia From Lenin to Gorbachev Hanover NH University Press of New England ISBN 978 0 87451 616 6 Eidintas Alfonsas Zalys Vytautas Senn Alfred Erich 1999 Lithuania in European Politics The Years of the First Republic 1918 1940 Paperback ed New York St Martin s Press ISBN 0 312 22458 3 Erickson John 1984 The Soviet High Command A Military Political History 1918 1941 A Military Political History 1918 1941 Westview Press Inc ISBN 978 0 367 29600 1 Figes Orlando 1997 A People s Tragedy A History of the Russian Revolution New York Viking ISBN 978 0670859160 Gellately Robert 2007 Lenin Stalin and Hitler The Age of Social Catastrophe New York Knopf ISBN 978 1 4000 4005 6 Grebenkin I N The Disintegration of the Russian Army in 1917 Factors and Actors in the Process Russian Studies in History 56 3 2017 172 187 Haupt Georges amp Marie Jean Jacques 1974 Makers of the Russian revolution London George Allen amp Unwin ISBN 978 0801408090 Holquist Peter 2002 Making War Forging Revolution Russia s Continuum of Crisis 1914 1921 Cambridge Harvard University Press ISBN 0 674 00907 X Kenez Peter 1977 Civil War in South Russia 1919 1920 The Defeat of the Whites Berkeley University of California Press ISBN 978 0520033467 Kinvig Clifford 2006 Churchill s Crusade The British Invasion of Russia 1918 1920 London Hambledon Continuum ISBN 978 1847250216 Krivosheev G F 1997 Soviet Casualties and Combat Losses in the Twentieth Century London Greenhill Books ISBN 978 1 85367 280 4 Mawdsley Evan 2007 The Russian Civil War New York Pegasus Books ISBN 978 1681770093 Overy Richard 2004 The Dictators Hitler s Germany and Stalin s Russia New York W W Norton amp Company ISBN 978 0 393 02030 4 Rakowska Harmstone Teresa 1970 Russia and Nationalism in Central Asia The Case of Tadzhikistan Baltimore Johns Hopkins Press ISBN 978 0801810213 Read Christopher 1996 From Tsar to Soviets Oxford Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0195212419 Rosenthal Reigo 2006 Loodearmee Northwestern Army in Estonian Tallinn Argo ISBN 9949 415 45 4 Ryan James 2012 Lenin s Terror The Ideological Origins of Early Soviet State Violence London Routledge ISBN 978 1 138 81568 1 Archived from the original on 11 November 2020 Retrieved 15 May 2017 Stewart George 2009 The White Armies of Russia A Chronicle of Counter Revolution and Allied Intervention ISBN 978 1847349767 Smith David A Tucker Spencer C 2014 Faustschlag Operation World War I The Definitive Encyclopedia and Document Collection Santa Barbara CA ABC CLIO pp 554 555 ISBN 978 1851099658 Archived from the original on 15 February 2017 Retrieved 27 December 2017 Thompson John M 1996 A Vision Unfulfilled Russia and the Soviet Union in the Twentieth Century Lexington MA ISBN 978 0669282917 Volkogonov Dmitri 1996 Trotsky The Eternal Revolutionary Translated and edited by Harold Shukman London HarperCollins Publishers ISBN 978 0002552721 Wheeler Geoffrey 1964 The Modern History of Soviet Central Asia New York Frederick A Praeger OCLC 865924756 Further reading EditActon Edward V et al eds Critical companion to the Russian Revolution 1914 1921 Indiana UP 1997 Brovkin Vladimir N 1994 Behind the Front Lines of the Civil War Political Parties and Social Movements in Russia 1918 1922 Princeton UP excerpt Archived 28 July 2020 at the Wayback Machine Dupuy T N The Encyclopedia of Military History many editions Harper amp Row Publishers Ford Chris Reconsidering the Ukrainian Revolution 1917 1921 The Dialectics of National Liberation and Social Emancipation Debatte 15 3 2007 279 306 Peter Kenez Civil War in South Russia 1918 The First Year of the Volunteer Army U of California Press 1971 Lincoln W Bruce Red victory A history of the Russian Civil War 1989 Luckett Richard The White Generals An Account of the White Movement and the Russian Civil War Routledge 2017 Marples David R Lenin s Revolution Russia 1917 1921 Routledge 2014 Moffat Ian ed The Allied Intervention in Russia 1918 1920 The Diplomacy of Chaos 2015 Polyakov Yuri The Civil War in Russia Its Causes and Significance Novosti 1981 Serge Victor Year One of the Russian Revolution Haymarket 2015 Smele Jonathan D If Grandma had Whiskers Could the Anti Bolsheviks have won the Russian Revolutions and Civil Wars Or the Constraints and Conceits of Counterfactual History Revolutionary Russia 2020 1 32 doi 10 1080 09546545 2019 1675961 Archived 28 July 2020 at the Wayback Machine Smele Jonathan The Russian Civil Wars 1916 1926 Ten Years That Shook the World Oxford UP 2016 Smele Jonathan D Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars 1916 1926 2 Vol Rowman amp Littlefield 2015 Stewart George The White Armies of Russia A Chronicle of Counter Revolution and Allied Intervention 2008 excerpt Archived 27 June 2015 at the Wayback Machine Stone David R The Russian Civil War 1917 1921 in The Military History of the Soviet Union Swain Geoffrey 2015 The Origins of the Russian Civil War excerpt Archived 28 July 2020 at the Wayback Machine Smele Jonathan D Still Searching for the Third Way Geoffrey Swain s Interventions in the Russian Civil Wars Europe Asia Studies 68 10 2016 1793 1812 Primary sources Edit Butt V P et al eds The Russian Civil War Documents from the Soviet Archives Springer 2016 McCauley Martin ed The Russian Revolution and the Soviet State 1917 1921 Documents Springer 1980 Murphy A Brian ed The Russian Civil War Primary Sources Springer 2000 online review Archived 27 June 2020 at the Wayback MachineExternal links Edit Wikimedia Commons has media related to Civil war of Russia Wikiquote has quotations related to Russian Civil War Newsreels about Russian Civil War Net Film Newsreels and Documentary Films Archive Sumpf Alexandre Russian Civil War in 1914 1918 online International Encyclopedia of the First World War Mawdsley Evan International Responses to the Russian Civil War Russian Empire in 1914 1918 online International Encyclopedia of the First World War Read Christopher Revolutions Russian Empire in 1914 1918 online International Encyclopedia of the First World War Peeling Siobhan War Communism in 1914 1918 online International Encyclopedia of the First World War Beyrau Dietrich Post war Societies Russian Empire in 1914 1918 online International Encyclopedia of the First World War Brudek Pawe Revolutions East Central Europe in 1914 1918 online International Encyclopedia of the First World War Melancon Michael S Social Conflict and Control Protest and Repression Russian Empire in 1914 1918 online International Encyclopedia of the First World War Russian Revolution and Civil War archive at libcom org library BBC History of the Russian Revolution 3 February 2007 Russian Civil War Spartacus History downloaded 3 January 2006 Russian Civil War 1918 1920 On War website downloaded 4 January 2006 Civil War of 1917 1922 at Encyclopedia of Russian History 3 February 2007 Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Russian Civil War amp oldid 1138158490, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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