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Russian Civil War
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Overview
Following the abdication of Nicholas II of Russia and the turbulent Russian Revolution throughout 1917, the Russian Provisional Government was established. In October another revolution occurred in which the Red Guard, armed groups of workers and deserting soldiers directed by the Bolshevik Party, seized control of Saint Petersburg (then known as Petrograd) and began an immediate armed takeover of cities and villages throughout the former Russian Empire. In January 1918, Lenin had the Constituent Assembly violently dissolved, proclaiming the Soviets as the new government of Russia.
The Bolsheviks decided to immediately make peace with the German Empire and the Central Powers, as they had promised the Russian people prior to the Revolution. Vladimir Lenin's political enemies attributed this decision to his sponsorship by the foreign office of William II, German Emperor, offered by the latter in hopes that with a revolution, Russia would withdraw from World War I. This suspicion was bolstered by the German Foreign Ministry's sponsorship of Lenin's return to Petrograd.
A cease fire was immediately announced and peace talks began. As a condition for peace, the proposed treaty by the Central Powers conceded huge portions of the former Russian Empire to Imperial Germany 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".
In view of this, the Germans began an all out advance on the Eastern Front, encountering no resistance. 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 were incapable of stopping 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 March 6, 1918. The Soviets viewed the treaty as merely a necessary and expedient means to end the war. Therefore they ceded large amounts of territory to the German Empire, which created several short lived satellite buffer states within its sphere of influence in Finland, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, Belarus, Ukraine and Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. Following the defeat of Germany in World War I, the Soviets eventually recovered much of the territory they gave up, though many of these countries remained independent.
In the wake of the October Revolution, the old Russian army had been demobilized and the volunteer based Red Guard was the Bolsheviks' main military arm. In January, Trotsky headed its reorganization into the "Workers' and Peasants' Red Army," in order to create a more professional fighting force. He instituted a forceful conscription program, frequently resorting to repressive tactics, and used former Tsarist officers as "military specialists".
In the elections to the Constituent Assembly, the Bolsheviks constituted a minority of the vote and dissolved it. In general, they had support primarily in the Saint Petersburg and Moscow Soviets and some other industrial regions.
While resistance to the Red Guard began on the very next day after the Bolshevik uprising, the Brest-Litovsk treaty and the political ban became a catalyst for the formation of anti-Bolshevik groups both inside and outside Russia, pushing them into action against the new regime.
A loose confederation of anti-Bolshevik forces aligned against the Communist government, including land-owners, 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 foreign influence and led by General Yudenich, Admiral Kolchak and General Denikin, became known as the White movement (sometimes referred to as the "White Army"), and they controlled significant parts of the former Russian empire for most of the war.
A Ukrainian nationalist movement known as the Green Army and an anarchist movement known as the Black Army played a much smaller part in the war, sometimes harrying both the Reds and the Whites, and sometimes even each other.
The Western Allies, upset at the withdrawal of Russia from the war effort and worried about a possible Russo-German alliance, also expressed their dismay at the Bolsheviks. Winston Churchill declared that Bolshevism must be "strangled in its cradle". In addition, there was a concern, shared by many Central Powers as well, that the socialist revolutionary ideas would spread to the West. Hence, many of these countries expressed their support for the Whites, including the provision of troops and supplies.
The majority of the fighting ended in 1920 with the defeat of General Pyotr Wrangel in the Crimea, but a notable resistance in certain areas continued until 1922 (e.g, Kronstadt Uprising, Tambov Rebellion, and the final resistance of the White movement in the Far East).
The Soviet historiography traditionally referred to the conflict as the "Civil War and Military Intervention of 191–1922". This term also encompassed the Polish-Soviet War, resistance in Ukraine, as well as Basmachi resistance and foreign intervention in Central Asia in its definition.
Geography and chronology
In the European part of Russia the war was fought across three main fronts; the eastern, the southern and the north-western. It can also be roughly split into the following periods.
The first period lasted from the Revolution until the Armistice. Already on the date of the Revolution, Cossack General Kaledin refused to recognize it and assumed full governmental authority in the Don region, 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.
Most of the fighting in this first period was sporadic, involving only small groups amid a fluid and rapidly shifting strategic scene. Among the antagonists were the Czechoslovaks, known as the Czechoslovak Legion or "White Czechs", the Poles of the Polish 5th Rifle Division and the pro-Bolshevik Red Latvian riflemen.
The second period of the war was the key stage, which lasted from January to November of 1919. At first the White armies' advances from the south (under Denikin), the east (under Kolchak) and the northwest (under Yudenich) were successful, pushing back the new Red Army on all three fronts. But Leon Trotsky reformed the Red Army and pushed back Kolchak's forces (in June) and Denikin's and Yudenich's armies (in October). The fighting power of all the White armies was broken almost simultaneously in mid-November.
The third period of the war was the extended siege of the last White forces in the Crimea. Wrangel had gathered the remnants of the armies of Denikin, and they had fortified their positions in the Crimea. They held these positions until the Red Army returned from Poland where they had been fighting the Polish-Soviet war. When the full force of the Red Army was turned on them the Whites were soon overwhelmed, and the remaining troops were evacuated to Constantinople in November 1920.
The last period of 1921–1923 is characterized by two main courses of events. The first was the escalation of peasant uprisings. The uprisings started already in 1918, but they were fueled by the demobilization of the Red Army after their defeat of the major forces of the White Movement. The second is the resistance of the White remnants in Eastern Siberia and Russian Far East. In Soviet historiography the end of the Civil War is dated by October 25, 1922, the day of the take over of Vladivostok, however some hostilities continued later as well.
Course of eventsThe 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 quickly put down by the Red Guards, notably the Latvian rifle Division under I.I. Vatsetis.
The initial groups that fought against the Communists were local Cossack armies that had declared their loyalty to the Provisional Government. Prominent among them were Kaledin of the Don Cossacks and Semenov of the Siberian Cossacks. In November, General Alekseev, the old Tsarist Commander-in-Chief, began to organize a Volunteer Army (??????????????? ?????, Dobrovolcheskaya Armiya) in Novocherkassk. He was joined in December by Kornilov. These forces fought against the Bolshevik army all across the Ukraine. The Cossacks took Rostov in December 1917.
1918In July 1918, Lenin established the Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic. The Bolsheviks, however, were facing mammoth problems — chief amongst which were impending bankruptcy, White opposition and impatience on the part of the people. The Bolsheviks had to fight for their very survival. The secret police conducted a reign of terror (the "Red Terror"), during which thousands were put to death. As one Bolshevik leader observed, "The Bourgeoisie put individuals to death; we exterminate whole classes." Even the abdicated Tsar and his family, in captivity, were killed (the common explanation is that this was done to prevent their release and use as a "banner" by the advancing Whites). Soviet novelist Boris Pasternak writes evocatively of this period in his book, Dr Zhivago, describing the many atrocities committed by both sides.
Rostov was captured in March 1918. In the course of the Ice March, the Cossack Volunteer Army was evacuated to the Kuban, where they joined with the Kuban Cossacks to mount an abortive assault on Ekaterinodar. General Kornilov was killed in the fighting on April 13, Operational command passed to General Denikin who spent the next few months rebuilding his Cossack army. In October, General Alekseev died of a heart attack and General Denikin was (in theory at least) now the top political leader for the White armies in Southern Russia.
The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, which pulled Russia out of the war and gave Germany control over vast stretches of western Russia, came as a shock to the Allies. The British and the French had supported Russia on a massive scale with war materials and money. After the treaty, it looked like much of that material would fall into the hands of the Germans. Under this pretext, the United Kingdom and France sent troops into Russian ports. There were violent confrontations with troops loyal to the Bolsheviks.
It was not until Spring of 1918 that the Right Socialist-Revolutionaries, as well as some of the Mensheviks joined the armed struggle against the Bolsheviks. Initially, they had been opposed to civil war, but the Brest-Litovsk treaty and the establishment of harsh dictatorial measures changed their position. The Socialist-Revolutionaries could well have been a serious threat, for they had some popular support and the authority of their election victory on the Russian Constituent Assembly in 1918, but they needed an army. An early attempt by the Socialist-Revolutionary Party to recruit Latvian troops in July 1918 was a failure. The Czechoslovak Legion proved to be a more reliable group in aid of their "democratic counter-revolution".
The Czech Legion had been part of the Russian army and numbered around 30,000 by October 1917. Most were former prisoners of war and deserters from the Austro-Hungarian Army. Encouraged by Tomáš Masaryk, the legion was renamed the Czechoslovak Army Corps and hoped to continue fighting the Germans. An agreement with the new Bolshevik government to pass by sea through Vladivostok (so they could unite with the Czechoslovak legions in France) collapsed over an attempt to disarm the Corps. Instead their soldiers disarmed the Bolshevik forces in June 1918 at Cheliabinsk. Within a month the Czechoslovak Legion controlled most of the Trans-Siberian Railroad from Lake Baikal to the Ural Mountains regions. By August they had extended their control even farther, taking over Ekaterinburg on July 26, 1918. Shortly before the fall of Ekaterinburg (on July 17, 1918), the former Tsar and his family had been executed by the Ural Soviet to prevent them falling into the hands of the Whites.
The Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries supported peasant fighting against Soviet control of food supplies. In May 1918, with the support of the Czechoslovak Legion, they took Samara and Saratov, establishing the Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly (?????, Komuch). By July the authority of Komuch extended over much of the area controlled by the Czechoslovak Legion. The Komuch pursued an ambivalent social policy, combining democratic and even 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.
There were also conservative and nationalist "governments" being formed by the Bashkirs, the Kyrgyz and the Tatars (see Idel-Ural State) as well as a Siberian Regional Government in Omsk. In September 1918, all the anti-Soviet governments met in Ufa and agreed to form a new Russian Provisional Government in Omsk, headed by a Directory of five: three Socialist-Revolutionaries (Avksentiev, Boldyrev and Zenzinov) and two Kadets, (V. A. Vinogradov and P. V. Vologodskii).
However, the new government quickly came under the influence of the new War Minister, Rear-Admiral Kolchak. On November 18, a coup d'état established Kolchak as dictator. The members of the Directory were arrested and Kolchak proclaimed the "Supreme Ruler of Russia". Kolchak was apolitical and not involved in the coup. He proved to be ineffective as both a political and military leader (his training being all in naval warfare). Kolchak also did not get along with the leaders of Czechoslovak Legion, the strongest military force in the area.
To the Soviets, the emergence of Admiral Kolchak was a political victory because it confirmed their opponents as anti-democratic reactionaries. Following a reorganisation of the People's Army, Kolchak's forces captured Perm and Ufa in December of 1918. But this was to be the high water-mark for his army.
In July, two left Socialist-Revolutionaries and Cheka employees, Blyumkin and Andreyev, assassinated the German ambassador, Count Mirbach, in Moscow, in an attempt to provoke the Germans into renewing hostilities. Other left Socialist-Revolutionaries attempted to rouse Red Army troops against the regime. The Soviets managed to put down these local uprisings, and Lenin personally apologised to the Germans for the assassination. There were mass arrests of Socialist-Revolutionaries. Following two further terrorist acts on August 30 — these were the assassination of the Chairman of the Petrograd Cheka, Uritsky, and the wounding of Lenin -- the "Red Terror" was unleashed in response. Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries were expelled from the Soviets and anyone suspected of counter-revolutionary activity could be imprisoned or executed without trial.
1919
The stage was now set for the key year of the Civil War. The Bolshevik government was firmly in control of the core of Russia, from Petrograd through Moscow and south to Tsaritsyn (now Volgograd). Against this government in the east, Admiral Kolchak had a small army and had some control over the Trans-Siberian Railroad. In the south Cossacks armies controlled much of the Don and the Ukraine. In the Caucasus, General Denikin had established an army. In the newly independent country of Estonia General Yudenich was organizing an army. Estonia was overtly hostile to the Bolsheviks and had been fighting with them since November 1918. The French occupied Odessa. The British occupied Murmansk. The British and the United States occupied Arkhangelsk and the Japanese occupied Vladivostok.
Trotsky ordered the Bolshevik army to recapture Ukraine first. This they did in a quick campaign in the winter-spring of 1919. The Cossacks had been unable to organize and capitalize on their successes at the end of 1917. Consequently, when the Soviet counter-offensive began in January 1919—under the Bolshevik leader Antonov-Ovseenko—the Cossack forces rapidly fell apart. The Red Army captured Kiev on February 3, 1919 and ten days later, with his army in chaos, General Kaledin committed suicide.
With Bolshevik forces seemingly triumphant in Ukraine, the French, having done almost no fighting, withdrew their troops from Odessa on April 8, 1919.
While the war was going on in Ukraine, Trotsky sent another army against Kolchak's forces. This army, lead by the capable commander Tukhachevsky, recaptured Ekaterinburg on January 27, 1919 and continued to push along the Trans-Siberian railroad. Both sides had victories and losses, but by the middle of summer the Red army was larger than the White army and was winning back lands it had lost earlier. The British and United States pulled their troops out of Murmansk and Arkhangelsk before the onset of winter, having accomplished little. The Red Army captured Omsk on November 14, 1919. Admiral Kolchak lost control of his government shortly after this defeat and in fact, the White army in Siberia essentially ceased to exist by December.
Even though the United Kingdom withdrew its troops, it continued to give significant military aid (money, weapons, food, ammunition, and some military advisors) to the White armies during 1919, especially to General Yudenich.
Despite large quantities of aid given to White commanders by Allied nations, many White commanders felt that the aid that was given was insufficient. Yudenich, in particular, complained that he was receiving insufficient support. The First World War greatly influenced the tactical thinking of many commanders on both sides of the Civil War, and as such they imagined that they required far more heavy weaponry than the mobile style of warfare that dominated the Civil War necessitated.
In the early summer, the Caucasus Army (now under operational command of General Wrangel) attacked north, trying to relieve the pressure on Kolchak's army or even link up with it. Wrangel's troops managed to capture Tsaritsyn on June 17, 1919. Trotsky responded to this threat by sending Tukhachevsky with a new army against Wrangel's troops. The Caucasus army of Wrangel, faced with superior numbers, retreated south, leaving Tsaritsyn to the Bolsheviks.
Later in the summer, another Cossack force called the Don Army under the command of Cossack General Mamontov attacked into Ukraine. The Red army, stretched thin by fighting on all fronts, was forced out of Kiev on September 2, 1919. Mamontov's Don Army continued north towards Voronezh but there they were defeated by Tukhachevsky's army on October 24. Tukhachevsky's army then turned towards yet another threat, the rebuilt Volunteer Army, and destroyed that army at Orel in October. The Red Army recaptured Kiev on December 17 and the defeated Cossacks fled back towards the Black Sea.
While the White Armies were being defeated in the south, the center and the east, there was still one more threat to the Bolshevik government. This threat came from General Yudenich who had spent the spring and summer organizing a small army in Estonia, with British support. In October of 1919 he tried to capture Petrograd in a sudden assault with a force of around 20,000 men. The attack was well executed, with night attacks and maneuvers to turn the flanks of the defending Red army. Yudenich also had six British tanks that caused panic whenever they appeared. By October 19, 1919 Yudenich's troops had reached the outskirts of Petrograd. The Bolshevik leadership in Moscow was willing to give up Petrograd, but Trotsky refused to accept the loss and personally went to the city to organize the defenses. Trotsky did everything he could to defend the city including arming the industrial workers and ordering the transfer of military forces up from Moscow. Within a few weeks the Red army defending Petrograd had tripled in size and outnumbered Yudenich three to one. At this point Yudenich gave up his attack and withdrew his army back to Estonia. Upon his return to Estonia, his army was disarmed by order of the Estonian government. The Bolshevik forces that followed Yudenich were beaten back by the Estonian army. Following the Treaty of Tartu most of Yudenich's soldiers then went into exile.
These victories by the Bolsheviks over Mamontov's Cossack army at Voronezh, Yudenich at Petrograd, and Kolchak at Omsk—all in a one month period—transformed the war. Quite suddenly the Bolshevik government had triumphed over all its internal enemies; the job that remained now was mopping up.
1920In Siberia, Admiral Kolchak's army had disintegrated. He himself gave up command after the loss of Omsk and designated Semenov as the new leader of the White Army in Siberia. Not long after this he was arrested by a dissident faction (which was probably made up of nationalist Bashkirs) as he traveled towards Irkutsk (historian Richard Pipes thinks the French military liaison was involved in this). Kolchak was turned over to the Red army in February 1920 and executed two weeks later (likely on Lenin's order). Fighting in Siberia continued for the next year as armed gangs—essentially bandits—roamed the land. Semenov and his tattered band of Cossacks ultimately retreated into China.
The Czechoslovak Legion had no real interest in fighting in the Russian Civil War. They wanted to fight the German army, but with the end of World War I, that desire died. Uninspired by Kolchak (and not, in turn, trusted by him) they spent most of 1919 moving their troops east and having them shipped, boat by boat, back to Europe. They were aided in this effort by U.S. military units, under the command of General William S. Graves, who took control over the eastern end of the Trans-Siberian Railroad. The Czechoslovak Legion managed to evacuate all their forces out from Vladivostok (as had been their original plan in 1918). They were gone by April 1920 which is when the U.S. troops also left Siberia.
Most of the White Armies were evacuated by British ships during the winter-spring of 1920. General Wrangel was the only holdout; his army remained an organized force in the Crimea throughout the summer of 1920. Then, trying to take advantage of the Red Army defeats at the end of the Polish-Soviet War of 1919-1920, General Wrangel attacked north. This offensive was rapidly halted by the Red Army and his troops were forced to retreat back to the Crimea in November 1920. He was evacuated by the British out of the Crimea on November 14, 1920 amidst horrific scenes of desperation and cruelty. Tens of thousands of Russians tried to escape from the Red army but were unable to find transport on the British ships.
1921-1922After the defeat of Wrangel, the Red Army attacked its Makhnovist allies at the end of 1920. A naval mutiny at Kronstadt, and peasant revolts in Ukraine, Tambov, and Siberia broke out in 1921.
The Japanese, who had plans to annex the Amur Krai of Eastern Siberia, finally pulled their troops out as the Bolshevik forces gradually asserted control over all of Siberia. On 25 October 1922 Vladivostok fell to the Red Army and the Provisional Priamur Government was extinguished. 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 Soviet Union in 1925, when their forces were finally withdrawn.
AftermathThe results of the civil war were momentous. Russia had been at war for seven years, during which time some 20,000,000 of its people had lost their lives. The civil war had taken an estimated 15,000,000 of them, including at least 1,000,000 soldiers of the Russian Red Army and more than 500,000 White soldiers who died in battle. 50,000 Russian Communists were killed by the counter-revolutionary Whites, and 250,000 civilians were killed by the Cheka. An estimated 100,000 Jews were murdered by the White Army in Ukraine. Punitive organs of the "All Great Don Host" sentenced 25,000 people to death between May 1918 to January 1919. Kolchak's Government shot 25,000 people in Ekaterinburg province alone. 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. Disease had reached pandemic proportions, with 3,000,000 dying of typhus alone in 1920. Millions more were also killed by widespread starvation, wholesale massacres by both sides, and even pogroms against Jews in Ukraine and southern Russia.
Another one to two million people, known as the White emigres, fled Russia - many with General Wrangel, some through the Far East, others fled west into the newly independent Baltic countries. These émigrés included a large part 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."
It is estimated that the total output of mines and factories in 1921 had fallen to 20 percent of the pre-World War level, and many crucial items experienced an even more drastic decline. For example, cotton production fell to five percent, and iron to two percent 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. The peasants responded to requisitions by refusing to till the land. By 1921, cultivated land had shrunk to 62 percent of the pre-war area, and the harvest yield was only about 37 percent 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 U.S. dollar declined from two rubles in 1914 to 1,200 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 socialism in other countries, most notably the German Revolution, contributed to the continued militarization of Soviet society. Although Russia experienced extremely rapid economic growth in the 1930s, the combined effect of World War I and the Civil War left a lasting scar in Russian society, and had permanent effects on the development of the Soviet Union.
Further reading - T.N. Dupuy, The Encyclopedia of Military History (many editions) Harper & Row Publishers.
- DK Atlas of World History, 1999, Dorling Kindersley Publishing.
See also
Short lived states:
Media:
- Doctor Zhivago - a novel about the Russian Civil War.
- Doctor Zhivago - a film based on the novel.
- Reds - a Hollywood movie set in the time period
External links- (Spartacus History, downloaded January 3, 2006)
- (On War website, downloaded January 4, 2006)
- (World Statesmen.org, downloaded February 16, 2007)
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