By 1919, the White armies were in retreat and by the start of 1920 were defeated on all three fronts.[17] Although the Bolsheviks were victorious, the territorial extent of the Russian state had been reduced, for many non-Russian ethnic groups had used the disarray to push for national independence.[18] In March 1921, duringa related war against Poland, thePeace of Riga was signed, splitting disputed territories inBelarus andUkraine between theRepublic of Poland on one side and Soviet Russia andSoviet Ukraine on the other. Soviet Russia invaded all the newlyindependent nations of the former empire or supported the Bolshevik and socialist forces there, although the success of such invasions was limited.Estonia,Latvia, andLithuania all repelled Soviet invasions,Ukraine and Belarus were divided (as a result of thePolish–Soviet War), whileArmenia,Azerbaijan andGeorgia were occupied by the Red Army.[19][20] By 1921, the Bolsheviks had defeated the national movements in Ukraine and theCaucasus, althoughanti-Bolshevik uprisings in Central Asia lasted until the late 1920s.[21]
The armies underKolchak were eventually forced on amass retreat eastward. Bolshevik forces advanced east, despite encountering resistance inChita,Yakut andMongolia. Soon the Red Army split theDon andVolunteer armies, forcing evacuations inNovorossiysk in March andCrimea in November 1920. After that, fighting was sporadic until the war ended with the capture ofVladivostok in October 1922, but anti-Bolshevik resistance continued with the MuslimBasmachi movement in Central Asia andKhabarovsk Krai until 1934. There were an estimated 7 to 12 million casualties during the war, mostly civilians.[22]
The Russian Empire fought in World War I from 1914 alongside France and the United Kingdom (Triple Entente) against Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire (Central Powers).
The Provisional Government, led bySocialist Revolutionary Party politicianAlexander Kerensky, was unable to solve the most pressing issues of the country, most importantly to end the war with the Central Powers. Afailed military coup by GeneralLavr Kornilov in September 1917 led to a surge in support for theBolsheviks, whotook control of 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 overthrowing the Provisional Government in late October, on the eve of theSecond All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, in what would be the second Revolution of 1917. The initial stage of the October Revolution which involved the assault onPetrograd occurred largely without any humancasualties.[25][26][27] Despite the Bolsheviks' seizure of power, they lost to the Socialist Revolutionary Party in the1917 Russian Constituent Assembly election, and the Constituent Assembly was dissolved by the Bolsheviks in retaliation. The Bolsheviks soon lost the support of other far-left allies, such as theLeft Socialist-Revolutionaries, after their acceptance of the terms of theTreaty of Brest-Litovsk presented by the German Empire.[28] Conversely, a number of prominent members of theLeft Socialist Revolutionaries had assumed positions in Lenin's government and led commissariats in several areas. This included agriculture (Kolegaev), property (Karelin), justice (Steinberg), post offices and telegraphs (Proshian) and local government (Trutovsky).[29] The Bolsheviks also reserved a number of vacant seats in the Soviets andCentral Executive for theMenshevik andLeft Socialist Revolutionaries parties in proportion to their vote share at the Congress.[30] The dissolution of the Constituent Assembly was also approved by the Left Socialist Revolutionaries andanarchists, both groups were in favour of a moreradical democracy.[31]
From mid-1917 onwards, theRussian Army, the successor-organisation of the oldImperial Russian Army, started to disintegrate;[32] the Bolsheviks used the volunteer-basedRed Guards as their main military force, augmented by an armed military component of theCheka (the Bolshevik statesecret police). In January 1918, after significant Bolshevik reverses in combat, the futureRussian People's Commissar for Military and Naval AffairsLeon Trotsky headed the reorganization of the Red Guards into aWorkers' and Peasants' Red Army in order to create a more effective fighting force. The Bolsheviks appointedpolitical 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 mandatoryconscription of the rural peasantry into the Red Army.[33] 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.[34] The forced conscription drive had mixed results, successfully creating a larger army than the Whites, but with members indifferent towardscommunist ideology.[28]
The Red Army also utilized former Tsarist officers as "military specialists" (voenspetsy);[35] sometimes their families were taken hostage in order to ensure their loyalty.[36] At the start of the civil war, former Tsarist officers formed three-quarters of the Red Army officer-corps.[36] By its end, 83% of all Red Army divisional and corps commanders were ex-Tsarist soldiers.[35]
TheRussian Constituent Assembly had been a demand of the Bolsheviks against the Provisional Government, which kept delaying it. After the October Revolution the elections were run by the body appointed by the previous Provisional Government. It was based on universal suffrage but used party lists from before the Left-Right SR split. The anti-Bolshevik Right SRswon the elections with the majority of the seats,[37] after which Lenin'sTheses on the Constituent Assembly argued inPravda that formal democracy was impossible because of class conflicts, conflicts with Ukraine and the Kadet-Kaledin uprising. He argued the Constituent Assembly must unconditionally accept sovereignty of the soviet government or it would be dealt with "by revolutionary means".[38]
On 30 December 1917, the SRNikolai Avksentiev and some followers were arrested for organizing a conspiracy. This was the first time Bolsheviks used this kind of repression against a socialist party.Izvestia said the arrest was not related to his membership in the Constituent Assembly.[39]
On 4 January 1918, theAll-Russian Central Executive Committee made a resolution saying the slogan "all power to the constituent assembly" was counterrevolutionary and equivalent to "down with the soviets".[40]
The Constituent Assembly met on 18 January 1918. The Right SRViktor Chernov was elected president defeating the Bolshevik supported candidate, the Left SRMaria Spiridonova (she would later break with the Bolsheviks and after the decades ofgulag, she was shot on Stalin's orders in 1941). The Bolsheviks subsequently disbanded the Constituent Assembly and proceeded to rule the country as aone-party state with all opposition parties outlawed in 1921.[41][42] A simultaneous demonstration in favor of the Constituent Assembly was dispersed with force, but there was little protest afterwards.[43]
The first largeCheka repression involving the killing oflibertarian socialists in Petrograd began in April 1918. On 1 May 1918, a pitched battle took place in Moscow between the anarchists and the Bolshevik police.[44]
The Union of Regeneration was founded in Moscow in April 1918 as an underground organization of "democratic resistance" to the Bolsheviks, composed of thePopular Socialists and "personal representatives" of Right Socialist Revolutionaries,Kadets and Defensists, among others. They were tasked with propping up anti-Bolshevik forces and to create a Russian state system based on "state consciousness, patriotism and civil liberties" with the goal to liberate the country from the "Germano-Bolshevik" yoke.[45][46][47]
On 7 May 1918, the Eighth Party Council of theSocialist Revolutionary Party commenced inMoscow and recognized the Union's leading role, putting aside political ideology and class for the purpose of Russia's salvation. They decided to start an uprising against the Bolsheviks with the goal of reconvening the Russian Constituent Assembly.[45] While preparations were under way, theCzechoslovak Legions overthrew Bolshevik rule inSiberia, theUrals and theVolga region in late May-early June 1918 and the center of SR activity shifted there. On 8 June 1918, five Constituent Assembly members formed the All-RussianCommittee of Members of the Constituent Assembly (Komuch) inSamara and declared it the new supreme authority in the country.[citation needed] The Social RevolutionaryProvisional Government of Autonomous Siberia came to power on 29 June 1918, after the uprising inVladivostok.
The main Russian military and political force opposing the Bolsheviks was known as theWhite movement, or simply the Whites; its armed formations were known as theWhite Army.
Some historians distinguish the White movement from the so-called "democratic counter-revolution"[48][49] led mainly by theRight SRs and theMensheviks that adhered to the values ofparliamentary democracy and maintained anti-Bolshevik counter-governments (Komuch,Ufa Directory) on the basis with alliance with the right-wing parties of Russia until November 1918. Until this period,parliamentary democracy was the main tendency of the anti-Bolshevik forces on the East (but not the South) of Russia, but since then, the White movement unified on anauthoritarian-right platform around the figure ofAlexander Kolchak, whorose to power through a military coup as its principal leader and hisAll-Russian government.[49][50][15] After the Kolchak coup, the Right SRs and the Mensheviks went to opposition to the Whites and co-operated with both factions of the Civil War on a tactical level, while also attempting to overthrow White administrations or establish themselves as "the third force" of the war: for example, they attempted to stage an anti-Kolchak mutiny in November 1919 with the help of the Czech generalRadola Gajda, and in 1920, they formed an organisation called 'Political Centre' and successfully overthrew the White administration in Irkutsk.[51]
Although the White movement included a variety of political opinions, from the liberals through monarchists to the ultra-nationalistBlack Hundreds,[52] and did not have universally-accepted leader or doctrine, the main force behind the movement were the conservative officers, and the resulting movement shared many traits with widespread right-wing counter-revolutionary movements of the time, namelynationalism,racism, distrust of liberal and democratic politics,clericalism, contempt for the common man and dislike of industrial civilization;[53] although not all of the participants of the movement wanted a restoration ofTsarism, it generally preferred it to the revolution, and its main goal became to establish an order which would share the main features of the imperial one;[15][54] its positive program was largely summarized in the slogan of "united and indivisible Russia" which meant the restoration of imperial state borders (excluding Poland and Finland)[55][56][57] and its denial of theright to self-determination and the resulting hostility towards themovements for national independence;[50] the movement is associated withpogroms andantisemitism, although its relations with the Jews were more complex, as at first, for example, Jewish proprietors supported the anti-Bolsheviks, but later the movement became known for its antisemitic pogroms and propaganda and discrimination against the Jews.[58]
When the White Army was created, the structure of theRussian Army of the Provisional Government period was used, while almost every individual formation had its own characteristics. The military art of the White Army was based on the experience of World War I, which, however, left a strong imprint on the specifics of the Civil War.[59]
The Western Allies armed and supported the Whites. 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 massiveforeign debts 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".[60] The British and French had supportedRussia during World War I on a massive scale with war materials.
After the treaty, it looked like much of that material would fall into the hands of the Germans. To meet that danger, theAllies 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.[61]
The Central Powers also supported the anti-Bolshevik forces and the Whites; after theTreaty of Brest-Litovsk, the main goals of the intervention were to maintain the newly conquered territories and prevent a re-establishment of the Eastern Front. After the defeat of the Central Powers, many armies that stayed mostly helped theRussian White Guard eradicate communists in the Baltics until their eventual withdrawal and defeat. Pro-German factions fought against the newly independent Baltic states until their defeat by the Baltic States, backed by the victoriousAllies.
Pro-independence movements and German protectorates
At theFifth All–Russian Congress of Soviets of 4 July 1918, theLeft Socialist-Revolutionaries had 352 delegates compared to 745 Bolsheviks out of 1132 total. The Left SRs raised disagreements on the suppression of rival parties, the death penalty, and mainly, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. The Bolsheviks excluded the Right SRs and Mensheviks from the government on 14 June for associating with counterrevolutionaries and seeking to "organize armed attacks against the workers and peasants" (though Mensheviks did not exist as a united movement and were split into theleft-wing "internationalist" and more right-wing factions), while the Left SRs advocated forming a government of all socialist parties. The Left SRs agreed with extrajudicial execution of political opponents to stop the counterrevolution, but opposed having the government legally pronouncing death sentences, an unusual position that is best understood within the context of the group's terrorist past. The Left SRs strongly opposed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and opposed Trotsky's insistence that no one try to attack German troops in Ukraine.[67]
According to historianMarcel Liebman, Lenin's wartime measures such as banning opposition parties was prompted by the fact that several political parties eithertook up arms against the newRussian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, or participated in sabotage, collaboration with the deposed Tsarists, or madeassassination attempts against Lenin and other Bolshevik leaders.[68] Liebman noted that opposition parties such as the Cadets andMensheviks who were democratically elected to the Soviets in some areas, then proceeded to use their mandate to welcome in Tsarist andforeign capitalist military forces.[68]In one incident in Baku, the British military, once invited in, proceeded to execute members of the Bolshevik Party who had peacefully stood down from the Soviet when they failed to win the elections. As a result, the Bolsheviks banned each opposition party when it turned against the Soviet government. In some cases, bans were lifted. This banning of parties did not have the same repressive character as later bans enforced under theStalinist regime.[68]
The Bolsheviks had begun to see the anarchists as a legitimate threat and associate criminality such asrobberies,expropriations andmurders with anarchist associations. Subsequently, theCouncil of People's Commissars (Sovnarkom) decided to liquidate criminal recklessness associated with anarchists and disarm all anarchist groups in the face of their militancy.[70]
From early 1918, the Bolsheviks started physical elimination of opposition, other socialist and revolutionary fractions.Anarchists were among the first:
Of all the revolutionary elements in Russia it is the Anarchists who now suffer the most ruthless and systematic persecution. Their suppression by the Bolsheviki began already in 1918, when — in the month of April of that year — the Communist Government attacked, without provocation or warning, the Anarchist Club of Moscow and by the use of machine guns and artillery "liquidated" the whole organisation. It was the beginning of Anarchist hounding, but it was sporadic in character, breaking out now and then, quite planless, and frequently self-contradictory.
Prior to the events that would officially catalyze theRed Terror,[71] Lenin issued orders and made speeches which included harsh descriptions of brutal measures to be taken against the "class enemies", which often were not actual orders or were not carried out as such. For example, in a telegram which became known as "Lenin's hanging order" he demanded people "crush" landowners inPenza and publicly hang "at least 100 kulaks, rich bastards, and known bloodsuckers"[71] in response to an uprising there. Yet only the 13 organizers of the murder of local authorities and the uprising were arrested, while the uprising ended.[72] In 1920, having received information that in Estonia and Latvia, with which Soviet Russia had concluded peace treaties, volunteers were being enrolled in anti-Bolshevik detachments, Lenin offered to "advance by 10–20 miles (versts) and hang kulaks, priests, landowners" "while pretending to be greens",[73] but instead, his government confined itself to sending diplomatic notes.[72]Leonid Kannegisser, a youngmilitary cadet of theImperial Russian Army, assassinatedMoisey Uritsky on 17 August 1918, outside the Petrograd Cheka headquarters in retaliation for the execution of his friend and other officers.[74]
Vladimir Pchelin's depiction of the assassination attempt on Lenin
On 30 August, the SRFanny Kaplan unsuccessfullyattempted to assassinate Lenin.[75] who sought to eliminate political dissent, opposition, and any other threat to Bolshevik power.[76] During interrogation by theCheka, she made the following statement:
My name is Fanya Kaplan. Today I shot Lenin. I did it on my own. I will not say from whom I obtained my revolver. I will give no details. I had resolved to kill Lenin long ago. I consider him a traitor to the Revolution. I was exiled to Akatui for participating in an assassination attempt against a Tsarist official in Kiev. I spent 11 years at hard labour. After the Revolution, I was freed. I favoured theConstituent Assembly and am still for it.[77]
Kaplan referenced the Bolsheviks' growing authoritarianism, citing their forcible shutdown of the Constituent Assembly in January 1918, theelections to which they had lost. When it became clear that Kaplan would not implicate any accomplices, she was executed inAlexander Garden. The order was carried out by the commander of the Kremlin, the former Baltic sailor P. D. Malkov and a group of Latvian Bolsheviks[78][page needed][non-primary source needed] on 3 September 1918, with a bullet to the back of the head.[79] Her corpse was bundled into a barrel and set alight. The order came fromYakov Sverdlov, who only six weeks earlier had ordered themurder of the Tsar and his family.[80][81]: 442
These events persuaded the government to heed Dzerzhinsky's lobbying for greater terror against opposition. As a result of the failed attempt on Lenin's life, he began to crack down on his political enemies in an event known as theRed Terror, considered to have begun between 17-30 August 1918.[75][69] More broadly, the term is applied to Bolshevik political repression throughout the Civil War (1917–22).[82][83][69] The campaign of mass repressions would officially begin thereafter.[75][69]
Protests against grain requisitioning of the peasantry were a major component of theTambov Rebellion and similar uprisings; Lenin'sNew Economic Policy was introduced as a concession.
The policies of "food dictatorship" proclaimed by the Bolsheviks in May 1918 sparked violent resistance in numerous districts ofEuropean Russia: revolts and clashes between the peasants and theRed Army were reported inVoronezh,Tambov,Penza,Saratov and in the districts ofKostroma,Moscow,Novgorod,Petrograd,Pskov andSmolensk. The revolts were bloodily crushed by the Bolsheviks: in the Voronezh Oblast, the Red Guards killed sixteen peasants during the pacification of the village, while another village was shelled with artillery in order to force the peasants to surrender and in the Novgorod Oblast the rebelling peasants were dispersed with machine-gun fire from a train sent by a detachment of Latvian Red Army soldiers.[84] While the Bolsheviks immediately denounced the rebellion as orchestrated by the SRs, there is actually no evidence that they were involved into peasant violence, which they deemed as counterproductive.[85]
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.
The first period lasted from the Revolution until the Armistice, or roughly March 1917 to November 1918. Already on the date of the Revolution,Cossack GeneralAlexey Kaledin refused to recognize it and assumed full governmental authority in theDon region,[86] where theVolunteer 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 ofCentral Asia out of the hands of the Provisional Government and White Army, setting up a base for the Communist Party in theSteppe andTurkestan, where nearly two million Russian settlers were located.[87]
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,[88] the Poles of the4th and5th Rifle Divisions and the pro-Bolshevik RedLatvian 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 theCrimea in 1920. GeneralWrangel 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 toConstantinople in November 1920.
In the October Revolution, the Bolshevik Party directed the Red Guard (armed groups of workers and Imperial army deserters) to seize control ofPetrograd and immediately began the armed takeover of cities and villages throughout the former Russian Empire. In January 1918 the Bolsheviks dissolved theRussian Constituent Assembly and proclaimed the Soviets (workers' councils) as the new government of Russia.
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 theDon Cossacks and GeneralGrigory Semenov of theSiberian Cossacks were prominent among them. The leading Tsarist officers of the Imperial Russian Army also started to resist. In November, GeneralMikhail Alekseev, the Tsar's Chief of Staff during the First World War, began to organize the Volunteer Army inNovocherkassk. 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.[89] On 9 December, theMilitary Revolutionary Committee inRostov rebelled, with the Bolsheviks controlling the city for five days until the Alekseev Organization supported Kaledin in recapturing the city. According toPeter Kenez, "The operation, begun on December 9, can be regarded as the beginning of the Civil War."[90]
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.[91] In April 1917 the Provisional Government set up the committee, which was mostly made up of former Tsarist officials.[92] 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.[93] 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.[94] However, after the Bolshevik destruction of the Provisional Government inTashkent, Muslim elites formed an autonomous government in Turkestan, commonly called the "Kokand autonomy" (or simplyKokand).[95] The White Russians supported that government body, which lasted several months because of Bolshevik troop isolation from Moscow.[96] In January 1918 the Soviet forces, under Lt. Col.Muravyov, invaded Ukraine and investedKiev, where theCentral Council of Ukraine held power. With the help of theKiev Arsenal Uprising, the Bolshevikscaptured the city on 26 January.[97]
Soviet delegation withTrotsky 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.[98]Vladimir Lenin's political enemies attributed that decision to his sponsorship by the Foreign Office ofWilhelm II, German Emperor, offered to Lenin in hope that, with a revolution, Russia would withdraw fromWorld War I. That suspicion was bolstered by the German Foreign Ministry's sponsorship of Lenin's return to Petrograd.[99] 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.[100] 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.[101]
On 16 December 1917 an armistice was signed between Russia and the Central Powers inBrest-Litovsk and peace talks began.[102] 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 upsettingnationalists andconservatives. 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".[103]
Therefore, on 18 February 1918, the Germans beganOperation Faustschlag on the Eastern Front, encountering virtually no resistance in a campaign that lasted 11 days.[103] 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. 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.
In Ukraine, the German-Austrian Operation Faustschlag had by April 1918 removed the Bolsheviks from Ukraine.[104][105][106][107] 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.[107]
Under Soviet pressure, the Volunteer Army embarked on the epic Ice March fromYekaterinodar toKuban on 22 February 1918, where they joined with the Kuban Cossacks to mount an abortive assault on Yekaterinodar.[108] The Soviets recaptured Rostov on the next day.[108] 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 the Bolsheviks had started.[109]
The Baku Soviet Commune was established on 13 April. Germany landed its Caucasus Expedition troops inPoti on 8 June. The OttomanArmy of Islam (in coalition withAzerbaijan) drove them out of Baku on 26 July 1918. Subsequently, theDashanaks, Right SRs andMensheviks started negotiations with Gen.Dunsterville, the commander of the British troops inPersia. The Bolsheviks and theirLeft 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 December, three-fourths of the army was in the Northern Caucasus. That included three thousand ofVladimir Liakhov's soldiers aroundVladikavkaz, thirteen thousand soldiers under Wrangel and Kazanovich in the center of the front, Stankevich's almost three thousand men with the Don Cossacks, whileVladimir May-Mayevsky's three thousand were sent to theDonets basin, and de Bode commanded two thousand in Crimea.[112]
Czechoslovak legionaries of the 8th Regiment atNikolsk-Ussuriysky killed by Bolsheviks, 1918. Above them stand also members of the Czechoslovak Legion.
The Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries supportedpeasants fighting against Soviet control of food supplies.[114] In May 1918, with the support of the Czechoslovak Legion, they tookSamara andSaratov, establishing theCommittee 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 aneight-hour working day, with "restorative" actions, such as returning both factories and land to their former owners. After the fall ofKazan, Vladimir Lenin called for the dispatch of Petrograd workers to the Kazan Front: "We must send down themaximum number of Petrograd workers: (1) a few dozen 'leaders' likeKayurov; (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 theSpecial Punitive Department of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combat of Counter-Revolution and Sabotage orSpecial 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.[115][116] 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.[117] In August, frustrated at continued reports of Red Army troops breaking under fire, Trotsky authorised the formation ofbarrier troops – stationed behind unreliable Red Army units and given orders to shoot anyone withdrawing from the battle line without authorisation.[118]
By the fall of 1918, anti-Bolshevik forces in the east included the People's Army (Komuch), the Siberian Army (of the Siberian Provisional Government) and insurgent Cossack units of Orenburg, the Urals, Siberia, Semirechye, Baikal, and 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 Red Forces recaptured the city on 8 September 1918 following a counteroffensive. On the 11thSimbirsk fell, and on 8 OctoberSamara. 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, the rear-admiralKolchak. On 18 November, acoup d'état established Kolchak as supreme leader. 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."[120] By mid-December 1918, the White armies had to leave Ufa, but they balanced that failure with a successful drive towardsPerm, which they took on 24 December.
In the Red Army, the concept of barrier troops first arose in August 1918 with the formation of the "blocking troops" or "anti-retreat detachments", (Russian:заградотряды, заградительные отряды, отряды заграждения /zagraditelnye otriady).[121] The barrier troops comprised personnel drawn from the Cheka punitive detachments or from regular Red Army infantry regiments.
The first use of the barrier troops by the Red Army occurred in the late summer and fall of 1918 in theEastern front during the Russian Civil War, when Leon Trotsky authorizedMikhail Tukhachevsky, the commander of the1st Army, to station blocking detachments behind unreliable Red Army infantry regiments in the 1st Red Army, with orders to shoot if front-line troops either deserted or retreated without permission.[121]
In December 1918, Trotsky ordered that detachments of additional barrier troops be raised for attachment to each infantry formation in the Red Army. On 18 December he cabled:
How do things stand with the blocking units? As far as I am aware they have not been included in our establishment and it appears they have no personnel. It is absolutely essential that we have at least an embryonic network of blocking units and that we work out a procedure for bringing them up to strength and deploying them.[121]
In 1919, 616 "hardcore" deserters of the total 837,000 draft dodgers and deserters were executed following Trotsky's draconian measures.[122] According to Figes, "a majority of deserters (most registered as "weak-willed") were handed back to the military authorities, and formed into units for transfer to one of the rear armies or directly to the front". Even those registered as "malicious" deserters were returned to the ranks when the demand for reinforcements became desperate". Forges also noted that the Red Army institutedamnesty weeks to prohibit punitive measures against desertion which encouraged the voluntary return of 98,000-132,000 deserters to the army.[123]
The barrier troops were also used to enforce Bolshevik control over food supplies in areas controlled by the Red Army as part of Lenin'swar communism policies, a role which soon earned them the hatred of the Russian civilian population.[124]These policies in part led to theRussian famine of 1921–1922, which killed about five million people.[125][126] However, the famine was preceded by badharvests, harsh winter,drought especially in theVolga Valley which was exacerbated by a range of factors including the war, the presence of the White Army and the methods of war communism.[127] The outbreaks of diseases such ascholera andtyphus were also contributing factors to the famine casualties.[128][129]
In February 1918, the Red Army overthrew the White Russian-supported Kokand Autonomy of Turkestan.[130] 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 ColonelFrederick Marshman Baile, who recorded a mission to Tashkent, from where the Bolsheviks forced him to flee. Another was GeneralWilfrid Malleson, leading theMalleson 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.[131] Despite setbacks as a result 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.[132]
On 6 July 1918, twoLeft Socialist-Revolutionaries and Cheka employees,Yakov Blumkin and Nikolai Andreyev, assassinated the German ambassador, CountMirbach. In Moscow aLeft 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 Socialist 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, and many of the conspirators executed, as "Mass Red Terror" became a reality.[133]
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".[36]
Trotsky armed all available workers, men and women, and ordered 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.[136] In fact, the Reds attacked Estonian army positions and fighting continued until a ceasefire went into effect on 3 January 1920. After theTreaty of Tartu, most of Yudenich's soldiers went into exile. Former Imperial Russian and then Finnish GeneralMannerheim 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]".
The British occupiedMurmansk and seizedArkhangelsk alongside United States forces. 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 underYevgeny Miller evacuated the region in February 1920.[137]
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 theGlazov–Chistopol–Bugulma–Buguruslan–Sharlyk line. Reds started theircounteroffensive against Kolchak's forces at the end of April. The Red 5th Army, led by the capable commanderTukhachevsky, capturedElabuga on 26 May,Sarapul on 2 June andIzevsk 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.[138]
Following the abortive offensive at Chelyabinsk, the White armies withdrew beyond theTobol. 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 uninterruptedretreat of the Whites to the east. On 14 November 1919 the Red Army captured Omsk.[139] Adm. Kolchak lost control of his government shortly after the defeat; White Army forces in Siberia had essentially 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 theChita area and joinedAtaman Semenov's forces.
White propaganda poster "For United Russia" representing Soviet Russia as a fallen communist dragon and the White Cause as a crusading knightAnti-Polish Soviet propaganda poster, 1920
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 Russian counteroffensive began in January 1919 under the Bolshevik commanderAntonov-Ovseenko, the Cossack forces rapidly fell apart. The Red Army captured Kiev on 3 February 1919.[140]
Denikin's military strength continued to grow in 1919, with significant munitions supplied by theBritish empire. 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 toprotect the Don district.[141]
On 18 December 1918, French forces landed inOdessa and Crimea, but evacuated Odessa on 6 April 1919, and the Crimea by the end of the month. According to Chamberlin, "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."[142]
Denikin then reorganized the Armed Forces of South Russia under the leadership ofVladimir May-Mayevsky,Vladimir Sidorin, andPyotr Wrangel. On 22 May, Wrangel's Caucasian army defeated the10th Army (RSFSR) in the battle forVelikoknyazheskaya, and then captured Tsaritsyn on 1 July. Sidorin advanced north towardVoronezh, increasing his army's strength in the process. On 25 June, May–Mayevsky capturedKharkov, and thenEkaterinoslav on 30 June, which forced the Reds to abandon Crimea. On 3 July, Denikin issued hisMoscow directive, in which his armies would converge on Moscow.[143]
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. MajorEwen Cameron Bruce of the British Army had volunteered to command a British tank mission assisting the White Army. He was awarded theDistinguished Service Order[144] for his bravery during the June 1919Battle 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.[145] The fall of Tsaritsyn is viewed "as one of the key battles of the Russian Civil War" and greatly helped the White Russian cause.[145] The notable historianSir 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".[146]
On 14 August, the Bolsheviks launched theirSouthern 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 theZbruch, the Ukrainian-Polish border.[147]
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 andOrel 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.[148] The CossackDon Army under the command of GeneralVladimir Sidorin continued north towardsVoronezh, butSemyon Budyonny's cavalrymen defeated them there on 24 October. That allowed the Red Army to cross theDon 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.[149]
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-Vācietis 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 formedA. I. Egorov's Southern Front between Zhitomir and Bobrov.Sergey Kamenev was in overall command of the two fronts. On Denikin's left wasAbram Dragomirov, while in his center wasVladimir May-Mayevsky's Volunteer Army,Vladimir Sidorin's Don Cossacks were further east, with Wrangel's Caucasian army at Tsaritsyn, and an additional was in the Northern Caucasus attempting to capture Astrakhan. On 20 October, May–Mayevsky was forced to evacuate Orel during theOrel-Kursk operation. On 24 October,Semyon Budyonny captured Voronezh, and Kursk on 15 November, during theVoronezh-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 captured in 1919, and held approximately the same area in which they had started two years before."[150]
By February 1919 the British government had pulled its military forces out of Central Asia.[151] 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.[152] 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.[153]
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.[152]
In the Ural-Guryev operation of 1919–1920, the RedTurkestan Front defeated theUral Army. During winter 1920,Ural Cossacks and their families, totaling about 15,000 people, headed south along the eastern coast of the Caspian Sea towardsFort Alexandrovsk. Only a few hundred of them reached Persia in June 1920.[154] TheOrenburg Independent Army was formed fromOrenburg Cossacks and other troops who rebelled against the Bolsheviks. During the winter 1919–20, the Orenburg Army retreated toSemirechye in what is known as theStarving March, as half of the participants perished.[155] In March 1920 her remnants crossed the border into the Northwestern region of China.
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 theManych. On 7 February, the Reds occupied Odessa, but thenMakhno's anarchists started fighting the Fourteenth Red Army. On 20 February, Denikin succeeded in recapturing Rostov, his last victory, before giving it up soon after.[156]
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 towardsNovorossiysk. Slipshodevacuation 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 were 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.[157]
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 thePolish–Soviet War of 1919–1920. The Red Army eventually halted the offensive, and Wrangel's troops had to retreat toCrimea in November 1920, pursued by both the Red and Black cavalry and infantry.Wrangel's fleet evacuatedhim and his army to Constantinople on 14 November 1920, ending the struggle of Reds and Whites in Southern Russia.[140]
After the defeat of Wrangel, the Red Army immediately repudiated its 1920 treaty of alliance with Nestor Makhno and attacked the anarchist Insurgent Army; thecampaign 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 anaval mutiny at Kronstadt in March 1921, followed by peasant revolts – all of which were put down by the Bolsheviks. The outset of the year was marked by strikes and demonstrations – in both Moscow and Petrograd, as well as the countryside – due to discontent with the results of policies that made upwar communism.[159][160] The Bolsheviks, in response to the protests, enacted martial law and sent the Red Army to disperse the workers.[161][162] This was followed up by mass arrests executed by theCheka.[163] Repression and minor concessions only temporarily quelled the discontent as Petrograd protests continued that year in March. This time the factory workers were joined by sailors stationed on the nearby island-fort of Kronstadt.[164] Disappointed in the direction of the Bolshevik government, the rebels demanded a series of reforms including: reduction in Bolshevik privileges, newly electedsoviets to include socialist and anarchist groups, economic freedom for peasants and workers, dissolution of the bureaucratic governmental organs created during the civil war, and the restoration of worker rights for the working class.[165] The workers and sailors of the Kronstadt rebellion were promptly crushed by Red Army forces, with a thousand rebels killed in battle and another thousand executed the following weeks, with many more fleeing abroad and to the countryside.[166][167][168] These events coincided with the10th Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks). There, Lenin argued that the soviets and the principle ofdemocratic centralism within the Bolshevik party still assured democracy. However, faced with support for Kronstadt within Bolshevik ranks, Lenin also issued a "temporary"ban on factions in the Russian Communist Party. This ban remained until therevolutions of 1989 and, according to some critics, made the democratic procedures within the party an empty formality, and helped Stalin to consolidate much more authority under the party. Soviets were transformed into the bureaucratic structure that existed for the rest of the history of the Soviet Union and were completely under the control of party officials and thepolitburo.[b] Red Army attacks on the anarchist forces and their sympathisers increased in ferocity throughout 1921.[169]
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 Legion as he traveled towardsIrkutsk without the protection of the army and was turned over to the socialistPolitical 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.[170]
Remnants of Kolchak's army reachedTransbaikalia 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 theAmur 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 theProvisional Priamur Government was soon extinguished:When the Japanese withdrew from the Priamurye (June to October 1922), the Soviet army of the Far Eastern Republic retook most of the Priamurye Government territory. The Ayano-Maysky District was controlled byAnatoly Pepelyayev at that time; its surrender in June 1923 marked the end of the Russian Civil War.
With the end of the war, theRussian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) no longer faced an acute military threat to its existence and power. However, the perceived threat of continued popular discontent, combined with the failure of socialist revolutions in other countries, such as theGerman revolution of 1918–1919, contributed to the continued militarization of Soviet society.
Around one to two million people known as theWhite 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.[171]
In Central Asia, Red Army troops continued to face resistance into 1923, wherebasmachi (armed bands of Islamic guerrillas) had formed to fight the Bolshevik takeover. The Soviets engaged non-Russian peoples in Central Asia, likeMagaza Masanchi, commander of the Dungan Cavalry Regiment, to fight against the Basmachis. The Communist Party did not completely dismantle the group until 1934.[172]
The results of the civil war were momentous. Soviet demographer Boris Urlanis estimated that 300,000 men were killed in action during the Civil War and Polish-Soviet War – 125,000 in the Red Army, 175,500 White armies and Poles – and the total number of military personnel from both sides dead from disease as 450,000.[173] Boris Sennikov estimated the total losses among the population ofTambov region in 1920 to 1922 resulting from the war, executions, and imprisonment in concentration camps as approximately 240,000.[174] By 1922, there were at least 7,000,000street children in Russia as a result of nearly ten years of devastation from World War I and the civil war.[175]
At the end of the Civil War the Russian SFSR was exhausted and near ruin. The droughts of 1920 and 1921, as well as theRussian famine of 1921, worsened the disaster still further, killing roughly 5 million people. Disease had reached pandemic proportions, with 3,000,000 dying oftyphus throughout the war. Millions more also died of widespread starvation, wholesale massacres by both sides andpogroms against Jews in Ukraine and southern Russia.[176]
As many as 10 million people died as a result of the Russian Civil War, and the overwhelming majority of these were civilian casualties.[177] There is no consensus among the Western historians on the number of deaths from the Red Terror. One source gives estimates of 28,000 executions per year from December 1917 to February 1922.[178] Estimates for the number of people shot during the initial period of the Red Terror are at least 10,000.[179] Estimates for the whole period go for a low of 50,000[180] to highs of 140,000[180][181] and 200,000 executed.[182] Most estimations for the number of executions in total put the number at about 100,000.[183] According to Vadim Erlikhman's investigation, the number of the Red Terror's victims is at least 1,200,000 people.[184] According toRobert Conquest, a total of 140,000 people were shot in 1917–1922, but Jonathan D. Smele estimates they were considerably fewer, "perhaps less than half that many".[185] Candidate of Historical Sciences Nikolay Zayats states that the number of people shot by the Cheka in 1918–1922 is about 37,300 people, shot in 1918–1921 by the verdicts of the tribunals — 14,200, i.e. about 50,000–55,000 people in total, although executions and atrocities were not limited to the Cheka, having been organized by the Red Army as well.[186][187] In 1924, an anti-BolshevikPopular SocialistSergei Melgunov (1879–1956) published a detailed account on the Red Terror in Russia, where he cited ProfessorCharles Saroléa's estimates of 1,766,188 deaths from the Bolshevik policies. He questioned the accuracy of the figures, but endorsed Saroléa's "characterisation of terror in Russia", stating it matches reality.[188][189] Modern historian Sergei Volkov, assessing the Red Terror as the entire repressive policy of the Bolsheviks during the years of the Civil War (1917–1922), estimates the direct death toll of the Red Terror at 2 million people.[190] Volkov's calculations, however, do not appear to have been confirmed by other major scholars.[c]
Victims of a pogrom perpetrated by Ukrainian forces in Khodorkiv, 1919
Some 10,000–500,000Cossacks were killed or deported duringDecossackization, out of a population of around three million.[192] An estimated 100,000 Jews were killed in Ukraine.[193] Punitive organs of the All Great Don Cossack Host sentenced 25,000 people to death between May 1918 and January 1919.[194] Kolchak's government shot 25,000 people in Ekaterinburg province alone.[195] The White Terror, as it would become known, killed about 300,000 people in total.[196]
The civil war had a devastating impact on the Russian economy. Ablack market emerged in Russia, despite the threat ofmartial law against profiteering. Theruble collapsed, with barter increasingly replacing money as a medium of exchange[197] and, by 1921, heavy industry output had fallen to 20% of 1913 levels. 90% of wages were paid with goods rather than money.[198] 70% of locomotives needed repair,[199] and food requisitioning, combined with the effects of seven years of war and a severe drought, contributed to a famine that caused between 3 and 10 million deaths.[200] Coal production decreased from 27.5 million tons (1913) to 7 million tons (1920), while overall factory production also declined from 10,000 million roubles to 1,000 million roubles. According to the noted historian David Christian, the grain harvest was also slashed from 80.1 million tons (1913) to 46.5 million tons (1920).[201]
War communism saved the Soviet government during the Civil War, but much of the Russian economy had ground to a standstill. Some peasants responded tofood 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 tworoubles in 1914 to 1,200 Rbls in 1920. Although Russia experienced extremely rapid economic growth[202] 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.
TheTreaty of Rapallo (1922) was an agreement signed on 16 April 1922 between theWeimar Republic and Soviet Union, under which both renounced all territorial and financial claims against each other and opened friendly diplomatic relations.[204]
Small caption in the lower right corner reads: The Bolsheviks promised: We'll give you peace We'll give you freedom We'll give you land Work and bread Despicably they cheated They started a war With Poland Instead of freedom they brought The fist Instead of land – confiscation Instead of work – misery Instead of bread – famine.
^See note regarding Library of Congress Country Studies. Chapter 7 – The Communist Party. Democratic Centralism.[citation needed]
^In particular, they seem quite at odds with the demographic considerations elaborated by Italian historian and professorAndrea Graziosi in the light of the good quality Tsarist and early Soviet statistics. According to him, theexcess deaths between 1914 and 1922 were about 16 million, of which 4–5 were military, the rest civilian; the overwhelming majority of the latter resulted from "starvation, typhus, epidemics, theSpanish flu and the famine of 1921–22", the roughly number of "victims of the various kinds of terror, and red and white repressions" amounting to a few hundred thousand— which is indeed a dreadful number in itself, however.[191]
^Bilash, Aleksandr Víktorovich;Bilash, Victor Fiódorovich (1993).Dorogi Nestora Makhno: istoricheskoe povestvovanie [Roads of Nestor Makhno (Historical narration)] (in Russian). Kiev: RVT︠S︡ "Proza". p. 340.ISBN978-5-7707-3814-8.OCLC31740208.
^Wright, Damien (2017).Churchill's Secret War with Lenin: British and Commonwealth Military Intervention in the Russian Civil War, 1918–20. Helion & Company. pp. 394,526–528,530–535.ISBN978-1-9115-1210-3.OL28006555W.
^Moss, Walter G. (October 2004).A History of Russia Volume 2: Since 1855. Anthem Press. pp. 207, 211.ISBN978-0-8572-8739-7.OL39239712M.Although full-scale civil war did not break out until 1918, opposition to the Bolshevik government appeared already in the first week after the November revolution... The corps' rebellion soon merged with local opposition and the Allied interventionists and marked the emergence of full-scale civil war in Russia.
^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 1987: "Typically, men of military 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."
^abOvery 2004, p. 446 By the end of the civil war, one-third of all Red Army officers were ex-Tsaristvoenspetsy"
^Osborne, R. (14 April 2023).White Army of Russia | History, Significance & Composition. Study.com. "Loosely commanded by former imperial admiral Alexander Kolchack, the White Army was composed of volunteers, conscripts, liberals, conservatives, monarchists, religious fundamentalists, and any group that opposed Bolshevik rule"
^Kenez, Peter (1980). "The Ideology of the White Movement".Soviet Studies.32 (32):58–83.doi:10.1080/09668138008411280.
^Kenez, Peter (2008).Red Advance, White Defeat: Civil War in South Russia 1919–1920. New Acdemia+ORM.ISBN978-1-9558-3517-6.Not all the participants in the White movement wanted to recreate tsarist Russia. [...] Nevertheless, the Civil War divided those who preferred tsarist Russia to the society which they feared their country was heading toward, and those who hated the old and had confidence that they could build a more just and rational society. After three years of struggle the Whites lost the war, proving that the traditional order had too few defenders... The defeat of the Whites was the final and conclusive defeat of Imperial Russia.
^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.
^Bullivant, Keith; Giles, Geoffrey J.; Pape, Walter (1999).Germany and Eastern Europe: Cultural Identity and Cultural Differences. Rodopi. pp. 28–29.ISBN9-0420-0678-1.
^Mieczysław B. Biskupski, "War and the Diplomacy of Polish Independence, 1914–18."Polish Review (1990): 5–17.onlineArchived 27 January 2020 at theWayback Machine
^Timothy Snyder,The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569–1999 (Yale University Press, 2004)
^Anatol Lieven,The Baltic revolution: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and the path to independence (Yale University Press, 1993) pp. 54–61.Archived copy.ISBN0300055528.
^abcWilde, Robert. 2019 February 20. "The Red Terror"ThoughtCo. Retrieved 24 March 2021.
^Llewellyn, Jennifer; McConnell, Michael; Thompson, Steve (11 August 2019)."The Red Terror".Russian Revolution. Alpha History. Retrieved 4 August 2021.
^Lyandres, Semion (Autumn 1989). "The 1918 Attempt on the Life of Lenin: A New Look at the Evidence".Slavic Review.48 (3). Cambridge University Press:432–448.doi:10.2307/2498997.JSTOR2498997.S2CID155228899.
^Melgunov, Sergey [1925] 1975.The Red Terror in Russia. Hyperions.ISBN0-8835-5187-X.
^Figes 1997, p. 258 quotes 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. Retrieved29 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."
^Chamberlin 1987, p. 31 Frequently the deserters' families were taken hostage to force a surrender; a portion were customarily executed, as an example to the others.
^Volkogonov 1996, p. 180: By December 1918 Trotsky had ordered the formation of special detachments to serve as blocking units throughout the Red Army.
^Reese, Roger R. (3 October 2023).Russia's Army: A History from the Napoleonic Wars to the War in Ukraine. University of Oklahoma Press. p. 109.ISBN978-0-8061-9356-4.
^Heinzen, James W. (1 February 2004).Inventing a Soviet Countryside: State Power and the Transformation of Rural Russia, 1917-1929. University of Pittsburgh Pre. p. 52.ISBN978-0-8229-7078-1.
^Raleigh, Donald J. (11 May 2021).Experiencing Russia's Civil War: Politics, Society, and Revolutionary Culture in Saratov, 1917-1922. Princeton University Press. p. 202.ISBN978-1-4008-4374-9.
^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.
^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.
^Berland, Pierre (28 August 1934). "Makhno".Le Temps.: 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.
^abStone, Bailey (2013).The Anatomy of Revolution Revisited: A Comparative Analysis of England, France, and Russia. Cambridge University Press. p. 335.
^Pipes, Richard (2011).The Russian Revolution. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. p. 838.
^Lincoln, W. Bruce (1989).Red Victory: A History of the Russian Civil War. Simon & Schuster. p. 384.ISBN0-6716-3166-7.... the best estimates set the probable number of executions at about a hundred thousand.
^Melgunov, Sergei Petrovich (2008) [1924].Der rote Terror in Russland 1918–1923 (reprint of the 1924 Olga Diakow edition) (in German). Berlin: OEZ. p. 186, note 182.ISBN978-3-9404-5247-4. An online English translation of the second edition of Melgunov's work is accessible atInternet Archive, whence the following translated text is drawn (p. 85, note n. 128): "Professor[Charles] Sarolea, who published a series of articles about Russia in Edinburgh newspaper "The Scotsman" touched upon the death statistics in an essay on terror (No. 7, November 1923.). He summarized the outcome of the Bolshevik massacre as follows: 28 bishops, 1219 clergy, 6000 professors and teachers, 9000 doctors, 54,000 officers, 260,000 soldiers, 70,000 policemen, 12,950 landowners, 355,250 professionals, 193,290 workers, 815,000 peasants. The author did not provide the sources of that data. Needless to say that the precise counts seem [too] fictional, but the author's [characterisation] of terror in Russia in general matches reality." The note is somewhat abbreviated in the 1925 English edition indicated in the bibliography: in particular, there is no mention of the imaginative nature of the data (p. 111, note n. 1).
^Kenez, Peter (1991). "The Prosecution of Soviet History: A Critique of Richard Pipes'The Russian Revolution".Russian Review.50 (3):345–351.doi:10.2307/131078.JSTOR131078.
^Эрлихман, Вадим (2004).Потери народонаселения в XX веке. Издательский дом «Русская панорама».ISBN5-9316-5107-1.
^Davies, R. W.; Harrison, Mark; Wheatcroft, S. G. (9 December 1993).The Economic Transformation of the Soviet Union, 1913–1945. Cambridge University Press. p. 6.ISBN978-0-5214-5770-5.
^Wade, Rex A. (2016). "The Revolution at One Hundred: Issues and Trends in the English Language Historiography of the Russian Revolution of 1917".Journal of Modern Russian History and Historiography.9 (1):9–38.doi:10.1163/22102388-00900003.
^Mueller, Gordon H. (1976). "Rapallo Reexamined: A New Look at Germany's Secret Military Collaboration with Russia in 1922".Military Affairs.40 (3):109–117.doi:10.2307/1986524.ISSN0026-3931.JSTOR1986524.
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Erickson, John. (1984).The Soviet High Command: A Military-Political History, 1918–1941: A Military Political History, 1918–1941. Westview.ISBN978-0-3672-9600-1.
Goldstein, Erik (2013).The First World War Peace Settlements, 1919–1925. London: Routledge.ISBN978-1-3178-8367-8.
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Hall, Richard C. (2015).Consumed by War: European Conflict in the 20th Century. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.ISBN978-0-8131-5995-9.
Holquist, Peter (2002).Making War, Forging Revolution: Russia's Continuum of Crisis, 1914–1921. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.ISBN0-6740-0907-X.
Humphreys, Leonard A. (1996).The Way of the Heavenly Sword: The Japanese Army in the 1920s. Stanford University Press.ISBN0-8047-2375-3.
—— (2004a).Red Attack, White Resistance; Civil War in South Russia 1918. Washington, DC: New Academia.ISBN978-0-9744-9344-2.
—— (2004b).Red Advance, White Defeat: Civil War in South Russia 1919–1920. Washington, DC: New Academia.ISBN978-0-9744-9345-9.
Kinvig, Clifford (2006).Churchill's Crusade: The British Invasion of Russia 1918–1920. Hambledon. p. 297.ISBN978-1-8472-5021-6.OL13668127W.
Krivosheev, G.; Andronikov, V.; Gurkin, V.; Kruglov, A.; Rodionov, E.; Filimoshin, M. (1993). "Людские потери красной армии в период гражданской войны и военной интервенции" [Human losses of the Red Army during the Civil War and military intervention].Гриф секретности снят: Потери вооружённых сил СССР в войнах, боевых действиях и конфликтах [The secrecy stamp has been lifted: Losses of the USSR armed forces in wars, hostilities and conflicts] (in Russian). Воениздат.ISBN5-2030-1400-0.
Lee, Stephen J. (2003).Lenin and Revolutionary Russia. London: Routledge.ISBN978-0-4152-8718-0.
Smele, Jonathan D. (2015).Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916–1926. Rowman & Littlefield.ISBN978-1-4422-5281-3.
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Smith, David A.; Tucker, Spencer C. (2014)."Operation Faustschlag".World War I: The Definitive Encyclopedia and Document Collection. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO. pp. 554–555.ISBN978-1-8510-9965-8. Retrieved27 December 2017.
Brovkin, Vladimir N. (1994).Behind the Front Lines of the Civil War: Political Parties and Social Movements in Russia, 1918–1922. Princeton University Press.Brovkin, Vladimir N. (19 April 2016).Behind the Front Lines of the Civil War: Political Parties and Social Movements in Russia, 1918-1922. Princeton University Press.ISBN978-0691633770.
Butt, V. P., et al., eds.The Russian Civil War: Documents from the Soviet Archives (Springer, 2016).
Dupuy, T. N.The Encyclopedia of Military History (many editions). Harper & Row, Publishers.
Grebenkin, I. N. (2017). "The Disintegration of the Russian Army in 1917: Factors and Actors in the Process".Russian Studies in History.56 (3):172–187.doi:10.1080/10611983.2017.1392213.S2CID158643095.
Serge, Victor.Year One of the Russian Revolution (Haymarket, 2015).
Smele, Jonathan D. (2016). "Still Searching for the 'Third Way': Geoffrey Swain's Interventions in the Russian Civil Wars".Europe-Asia Studies.68 (10):1793–1812.doi:10.1080/09668136.2016.1257094.
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