Russia - Civil war

• Causes of civil war:

  • Left - Lenin had forced the Kadet and right-wing SRs out of government; closed constituent assembly; Bolsheviks were sidelining the Soviets and imposing a one party dictatorship
  • Right - Aristocrats alienated by Bolshevik ideology; yearn for tsarist regime; rationing system meant bourgeoisie got least food
• Players in the civil war:

  • Reds
  • Whites
  • Czech legion - joined forces with the Whites
  • Poles - fought to gain control of western Ukraine
  • Greens - largely peasant army fighting for independence from control by anyone
  • Allies - Britain, France and USA all sent troops to help the whites
• Two main stages of civil war:

  • 1918-20 - mainly fought in east and south of Russia. Bolsheviks held area around Moscow and were attacked on different sides by the Whites
  • 1920-21 - nationalist conflict against the polish armies that had invaded western Ukraine. Russian forces drove back the Poles which led to the Treaty of Riga in March 1921
• 1918:

  • April-May - Czech legion seizes part of trans-Siberian railway and war begins
  • August - Deniki and Kolchaks White armies make rapid advances
  • November - Kolchak declares himself ‘supreme ruler’ of Russia
• 1919:

  • October - Denikins army advances to within 200 miles of Moscow and Yudenichs army advances to the outskirts of Petrograd
• 1920:

  • February - Kolchak captured and shot
  • March - Denikins army evacuated to the Crimea
  • May - Beginning of Russo-Polish war
  • October - Wrangels army is evacuated from the Crimea and the Bolsheviks establish control
• 1921:

  • March - Treaty of Riga is signed - grants independence to Poland
• Trotskys role:

  • Propaganda train
  • Strict discipline - if a unit retreated, without being told to, the political commissar would be shot then the unit commander.
  • Deserters were shot
  • Red army turned into a professional military force
  • 50,000 former tsarist officers were used to train new troops
  • Requisitioning grain from peasants to ensure Red army had food
• Murder of the tsar:

  • Tsar and family may have been figureheads for the Whites
  • July 1918 - family held in Yekaterinburg and the Cheka murdered them when they heard that White troops were nearby
  • Almost certain that Lenin authorised the killing
• Reasons for Red victory:

  • Geography - hub of communications and armaments factories and mostly densely populated regions
  • Unity and organisation - United in aim to survive
  • Leadership - well disciplined
  • Support - Reds land policies were more popular than whites so peasant support
  • Foreign involvement did not greatly aid the Whites but Reds could use it as propaganda
• Whites


  • Widely dispersed in less-developed parts
• The Civil War led to greater governmental centralisation and increased Party control
• Half a million Party members fought for the Red Army
• The Soviet bureaucracy grew much larger until there were more bureaucrats than workers
• Policies and decisions were created in the centre and carried out without question at the local level
• The Politburo quickly took over the running of both the Party and the government
• The Sovnarkom gradually met less frequently during the 1920s, as the Politburo increasingly bypassed it to give orders directly to the government ministries
• Central control of the economy increased after the war
• The Bolsheviks adopted a 'siege mentality' while surrounded by enemies in the Civil War
• The Bolsheviks used terror to ensure that people obeyed orders from the centre, and to eliminate anyone suspected of opposition
• After the civil war, areas conquered by the Red Army either became a part of the Russian Soviet Federal Socialist Republic or were allowed to remain as separate soviet republics
• At the end of 1922, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was officially established, known as the USSR or Soviet Union