White Movement Бѣлое движенiе Белое движение
Participant in the Russian Civil War
Flag of the White Movement
Active	1917–1923
Ideology	Anti-Bolshevism Anti-Communism Russian nationalism
Leaders	Alexander Kolchak (1918-early 1920) Anton Denikin (1920) Pyotr Wrangel (1920)
Strength	2,400,000 troops
Became	White émigrés
Allies	Allies of World War I
Opponents	Soviet Union Republic of China Nationalist movements Several communist states and movements
Battles/wars	Russian Civil War (incl. Southern Front, Northern Front, Eastern Front and Yakut Revolt)

The White movement (Russian: Бѣлое движенiе/Белое движение, tr. Beloye dvizheniye; IPA: [ˈbʲeləjə dvʲɪˈʐɛnʲɪjə]) and its military arm the White Army (Бѣлая Армiя/Белая Армия, Belaya Armiya) - known as the White Guard (Бѣлая Гвардiя/Белая Гвардия, Belaya Gvardiya) or the Whites (Белые and белогвардейцы, "White Guardsmen") - was a loose confederation of Anti-Communist forces that fought the Bolsheviks in the Russian Civil War.

Structure and ideology[link]

In the Russian context, White connoted three designations:

1. political contra-distinction to the Reds, whose revolutionary Red Army supported the Bolshevik government;
2. historical reference to absolute monarchy, specifically united under Russia’s first Tsar, Ivan III (1462–1505), styled “Albus Rex” (“White King”); and
3. sartorially, that some White Army soldiers wore the white uniforms of Imperial Russia.

Ideology[link]

Imperial insigne: The Kolchak Government in Russia.

The White movement posited themselves as the opponents of the Red Army.^[1] They advertised themselves as bringing law and order and the salvation of Russia, fighting against traitors, barbarians, and murderers.^[2] They often acted in response to previous Red aggression and worked to remove Soviet organizations and functionaries in White-controlled territory.^[3]

Overall, the White Army was nationalistic and patriotic ^[1] and thus, rejected ethnic particularism and separatism.^[2] The White Army generally believed in a united multinational Russia, and opposed separatists wanting to create nation-states instead of the Tsarist Russian Empire. Amongst White Army members, anti-Semitism was widespread^[1] which embarrassed its Western sponsors, given the Bolsheviks' outlawing of anti-Semitism in Russia. Winston Churchill personally warned General Denikin, whose forces effected pogroms, that "my task in winning support in Parliament for the Russian Nationalist cause will be infinitely harder if well-authenticated complaints continue to be received from Jews in the zone of the Volunteer Armies."^[4]

Another overarching characteristic of the White movement was the conservatism of many leaders. Autocracy was accepted while "politics" (what they saw as speeches, elections, party activities) was suspect.^[1]

Aside from being anti-Bolshevik^[2] and patriotic, the Whites had no set ideology or main leader.^[1] The White Armies did acknowledge a single provisional head of state, the so-called Supreme Governor of Russia, but this post was only prominent while Alexander Kolchak was filling it.

The movement had no set plan for foreign policy; Whites differed on policies toward Germany, debating whether or not to ally with it. The Whites wanted to keep from alienating any potential supporters and allies, and thus saw an exclusively monarchist position as a detriment to their cause and recruitment. White movement leaders such as Anton Denikin advocated for Russians to create their own government, claiming the military could not decide in Russians’ steads.^[1] Admiral Alexander Kolchak actually succeeded in creating a temporary wartime government in Omsk, acknowledged by most other White leaders, only for it to fall with the loss of his armies. Some warlords aligned with the White movement, such as Grigory Semyonov and Roman Ungern von Sternberg, did not acknowledge any authority but their own. Consequently, the White movement had no set political leanings: members could be monarchists, republicans,^[1] rightists, Kadets, etc.^[5] Among White Army leaders, neither General Lavr Kornilov nor General Anton Denikin were monarchists, yet General Pyotr Nikolayevich Wrangel was a monarchist willing to soldier for an elected, democratic Russian government. Moreover, other political parties supported the anti-Bolshevik White Army, among them the democrats, the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, and others opposing Vladimir Ilyich Lenin’s Bolshevik October Revolution; yet, depending on the time and place, those White Army supporters also exchanged right-wing allegiance for allegiance with the Red Army.

Structure[link]

"Why aren't you in the army?" Volunteer Army recruitment poster during the Russian Civil War.

The White Army: the flag of the Battalion of Death, later integral to the Volunteer Army.

Various and un-unified White forces existed, the most important and largest of which was the Volunteer Army in South Russia.^[1] Starting off as a small and well-organized military in 1917, the Volunteer Army soon grew. In 1918, the Kuban Cossacks joined the White Army and conscription of both peasants and Cossacks began. In late February 1918, 4,000 soldiers under the command of General Aleksei Kaledin were forced to retreat from Rostov-on-Don due to the onset of the Red Army and left for Kuban in order to unite with the Kuban Cossacks - most of which did not support the Volunteer Army - a maneuver known as the Ice March. In March, 3,000 men under the command of General Viktor Pokrovsky joined the Volunteer Army, increasing its membership to 6,000, and by June to 9,000. In 1919, the Don Cossacks joined and the Army began drafting Ukrainian peasants. In that year, between May and October, the Volunteer Army grew from 64,000 to 150,000 soldiers and was better supplied than its Red counterpart.^[5] The White Army’s rank-and-file comprised active anti-Bolsheviks, such as Cossacks, nobles, and peasants, as conscripts and volunteers.

The White movement’s leaders – and first members^[5] – were mainly military officers, though many came from outside of the nobility, such as generals Mikhail Alekseev and Anton Denikin, who came from serf families; or Lavr Kornilov, who was a Cossack. The White generals never mastered administration;^[1] they often utilized “prerevolutionary functionaries” or “military officers with monarchististic inclinations” for administering White-controlled regions^[3]

The White Armies were often lawless and disordered.^[2] Also, White-controlled territories had multiple different and varying currencies with unstable exchange rates; and the main currency, the Volunteer Army’s ruble, had no gold backing.^[5]

Theatres of operation[link]

  Bolshevik control, February 1918

  Bolshevik control, Summer of 1918

  Maximum advance of the anti-Bolshevik armies

The Whites and the Reds fought the Russian Civil War from November 1917 until 1921, and isolated battles continued in the Far East until 1923. The White Army—aided by the Allied forces (Triple Entente) from countries such as Japan, the United Kingdom, France, Italy and the United States and (sometimes) the Central Powers forces such as Germany and Austria-Hungary fought in Siberia, Ukraine, and the Crimea, but were defeated by the Red Army because of military and ideological disunity as well as the determination and increasing unity of the Red Army.

The main White Army war theatres were:

• The Southern front: Started on November 15, 1917 (creation officially announced on December 27 [both O.S.]) by General Mikhail Alekseev and commanded by General Lavr Kornilov, later headed by General Denikin and named the "Armed Forces of the South of Russia". The Southern Front featured massive-scale operations and was the most dangerous threat to the Bolshevik Government. At first, it was based entirely upon volunteers in Russia proper, mostly the Cossacks, among the first to oppose the Bolshevik Government. In 1919, after General Denikin’s attack upon Moscow failed, the Armed Forces of the South of Russia retreated. On March 26 and March 27, 1920 the remnants of the Volunteer Army were evacuated from Novorossiysk to the Crimea, where they merged with the army of Pyotr Wrangel.

• The Eastern (Siberian) front: Started in spring 1918, as a secret movement among army officers and right-wing socialist forces. In that front, they launched an attack in collaboration with the Czechoslovak Legions (then stranded in Siberia by the Bolshevik Government who barred them from leaving Russia). Admiral Alexander Kolchak headed that counter-revolutionary army and a provisional Russian government; despite some significant success in 1919, they were defeated and repelled to far eastern Russia, where they continued fighting until October 1922.

The same month, the Second Kuban Campaign was launched with support from Pyotr Krasnov. By September, the Volunteer Army was composed of 30,000-35,000 members, thanks to mobilization of the Kuban Cossacks gathered in the North Caucasus. Thus, the Volunteer Army took the name of the Caucasus Volunteer Army.

On January 23, 1919 the Volunteer Army took the name and Denikin oversaw the defeat of the 11th Soviet Army and capture of the North Caucasus region. After capturing Donbass, Tsaritsyn and Kharkov in June, Denikin's forces surrounded Moscow on July 3 (N.S.). The plan was for 40,000 fighters, under the command of General Vladimir May-Mayevsky to storm the city.

• The Northern and North-Western fronts: Headed by Nikolai Yudenich, Evgeni Miller, and Anatoly Lieven, were less co-ordinated than General Denikin’s Army of Southern Russia. The Northwestern Army was allied with Estonia, and Lieven's troops with the Baltic nobility. Adventurers led by Pavel Bermondt-Avalov and Stanisław Bułak-Bałachowicz played a role as well. The most notable operation in the front was Operation White Sword against the Russian capital of Petrograd.

Post–Civil War[link]

The defeated anti-Bolshevik Russians congregated in Belgrade, Berlin, Paris, Harbin, Istanbul, and Shanghai, and established military and cultural networks that lasted through the Second World War (1939–45), e.g., the Russian community in Harbin and the Russian community in Shanghai); afterwards, the White Russian’s anti-Communist activities established a home base in the United States. Moreover, in the 1920s and the 1930s, the White Movement established organisations, outside of Russia, meant to depose the Soviet Government with guerrilla warfare, e.g., the Russian All-Military Union, the Brotherhood of Russian Truth, and the National Alliance of Russian Solidarists. Russian cadet corps were established to prepare the next generation of anti-Communists for the “spring campaign” — a hopeful term denoting a renewed military campaign to reconquer Russia from the Soviet Government. In the event, many cadets volunteered to fight for the Russian Corps during the Second World War, the White Russian participation in the Russian Liberation Movement.

White Russians served under the Soviet Red Army during the Soviet Invasion of Xinjiang and the Xinjiang War (1937), and supported Albania's King Zog during the 1920s.

Prominent persons[link]

• Mikhail Alekseyev
• Stanisław Bułak-Bałachowicz
• Pavel Bermondt-Avalov
• Anton Denikin
• Mikhail Drozdovsky
• Mikhail Diterikhs
• Alexander Dutov
• Ivan Ilyin
• Nikolai Ruzsky
• Alexey Kaledin
• Vladimir Kappel
• Alexander Kolchak
• Lavr Kornilov
• Pyotr Krasnov
• Alexander Kutepov
• Mikhail Kvetsinsky
• Anatoly Lieven
• Sergey Markov
• Vladimir May-Mayevsky
• Evgeny Miller
• Konstantin Mamontov
• Viktor Pokrovsky
• Grigory Semyonov
• Andrei Shkuro
• Roman Ungern von Sternberg
• Pyotr Nikolayevich Wrangel
• Nikolai Yudenich

See also[link]

• Allied Intervention in the Russian Civil War
• White émigré
• Russian All-Military Union
• Basmachi movement
• Estonian War of Independence
• Finnish Civil War
• Great Siberian Ice March
• Czechoslovak Legions
• Italian Legione Redenta
• 1st Infantry Brigade (South Africa)
• White Terror (Russia)

References[link]

External links[link]

• Anti-Bolshevik Russia in pictures
• Museum and Archives of the White Movement
• (Russian) Memory and Honour Association
• (Russian) History of the White Movement

v t e White Armies and White Fleets of the Russian Civil War Southern Front Armed Forces of South Russia (Volunteer Army · Don Army · 1st Army Corps of AFSR · 2nd Army Corps of AFSR · 3d Army Corps of AFSR · Kiev Army Group of AFSR · Army Group of AFSR's Kiev Region · Army Group of AFSR's Novorossijsk Region · Army Group of AFSR's Kharkiv Region · Caucasus Army of AFSR · Krym-Azov Army of AFSR · Kuban Army of AFSR · Black Sea Fleet of White Movement · Caspian Sea Fleet of White Movement · Army of Wrangel) Eastern Front People Army of Komuch · Siberian Army · Western Army of White Movement · Orenburg Independent Army · 1st Army of White Movement · 2nd Army of White Movement · 3d Army of White Movement · Ural Army · Far East Army · Zemskaya Rat' · Siberian Fleet · Czechoslovak Legion North-Western Front Northern Corps of White Movement · North-Westhern Army of White Movement · West Russian Volunteer Army · Chudskoe Lake Fleet Northern Front Northern Army of White Movement · Arctic Fleet of White Movement Middle Asia Armed Forces of South Russia (Turkestan Army of AFSR · Caspian Sea Fleet of White Movement) · Turkestan Military Organisation · Peasant Army of Fergana

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Barony Castle

Black Barony, also known as Blackbarony, Barony Castle, and Darnhall, is a historic house at Eddleston in the Scottish Borders area of Scotland. The house is currently operated as a hotel, and is protected as a Category B listed building.^[1]

History[link]

The remains of a 16th-century tower house, built by the Murrays of Blackbarony, form the oldest part of the building.^[2] Sir Alexander Murray, 2nd Baronet, purchased the nearby estate of Cringletie in 1666.^[3] Sir Archibald Murray, 3rd Baronet (died c.1700) was a soldier and from 1689 served as "Sole Master of Work, Overseer, and Director-General of their Majesties' buildings" to King William II and Queen Mary II, filling the post which had been vacant since Sir William Bruce's dismissal in 1678.^[4]

The house was extended in the 18th century, resulting in the present facade. In 1771 Black Barony passed to the Murrays of Elibank, who retained ownership until 1930.^[1] Further enlargements were made in the 19th century, and in the first half of the 20th century the house was converted to hotel use.^[2] As of 2010^[update], the hotel is operated by De Vere Group.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Barony Castle, Peebles, DeVere Venues

Coordinates: 55°42′46″N 3°13′01″W / 55.71278°N 3.21694°W / 55.71278; -3.21694

Russian Civil War
Clockwise from top: Soldiers of the Don Army in 1919; a White infantry division in March 1920; soldiers of the 1st Cavalry Army; Leon Trotsky in 1918; hanging of workers in Yekaterinoslav by the Austro-Hungarian Army, April 1918.
Date 25 October 1917 – October 1922[1] Location Former Russian Empire, including Russian SFSR, Baltic states, Ukraine, Georgia, Poland, Finland, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Armenia), Mongolia, Persia Result Bolshevik victory in Russia, Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Mongolia Polish, Finnish, Lithuanian, Latvian, and Estonian victory in the respective countries Territorial changes Establishment of the Soviet Union in 1922; independence of Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland
Belligerents
Russian SFSR and other Soviet republics Left SR (1917) Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Ukraine (until 1919) Green armies (until 1919)	White Movement, including: Provisional All-Russian Government Autonomous Siberia Armed Forces of South Russia Members of the Constituent Assembly and others Newly emerged states, including:  Finland  Estonia  Latvia Lithuania Poland Ukraine Don (until 23 February 1919) Kuban (from 1919) Georgia Armenia and other pro-independence movements Allied Intervention (1918–1922), including:  United Kingdom  Czechoslovakia  Japan  France  United States and others Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Ukraine (from 1919) Green armies (from 1919) Kronstadt Left SR (1918) Bukhara Khiva and other Central Asian countries Basmachi	Central Powers (1917–19), including: Germany  Austria-Hungary Ottoman Empire Baltic German volunteers Freikorps Azerbaijan
Commanders and leaders
Vladimir Lenin Leon Trotsky Mikhail Tukhachevsky	Alexander Kolchak † Lavr Kornilov † Anton Denikin Nikolai Yudenich Peter Wrangel Alexey Kaledin † Pyotr Krasnov Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim Nestor Makhno (from 1919)	Max Hoffmann Rüdiger von der Goltz Nuri Pasha
Strength
3,000,000[2]	2,400,000 White Russians, 155,000 in Allied intervention.	February 1918: 50 German divisions[3] June 1919: 20,000 Baltic Germans and Freikorps,[4] 14,500 Ottoman Empire,[5]
Casualties and losses
1,212,824 casualties Records are incomplete.[2]	At least 1,500,000	840 Baltic German volunteers and Freikorps dead, 3,000 wounded 2,000 Ottoman army all causes

The Russian Civil War (25 October 1917 – October 1922)^[1] was a multi-party war in the former Russian Empire fought between the Bolshevik Red Army and the White Army, the loosely allied anti-Bolshevik forces. Many foreign armies warred against the Red Army, notably the Allied Forces and the pro-German armies.^[6] The Red Army defeated the White Armed Forces of South Russia in Ukraine and the army led by Aleksandr Kolchak in Siberia in 1919. The remains of the White forces commanded by Pyotr Nikolayevich Wrangel were beaten in the Crimea and were evacuated in the autumn of 1920. A number of independent countries – Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland – emerged from the war.

Background[link]

February Revolution[link]

After the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, the Russian Provisional Government was established during the February Revolution of 1917.

Creation of the Red Army[link]

In the wake of the October Revolution, the old Russian Imperial Army had been demobilized; the volunteer-based Red Guard was the Bolsheviks' main military force, augmented by an armed military component of the Cheka, the Bolshevik state security apparatus. In January, after significant reverses in combat, War Commissar Leon Trotsky headed the reorganization of the Red Guard into a Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, in order to create a more professional fighting force. Political commissars were appointed to each unit of the army to maintain morale and ensure loyalty.

In June 1918, when it became apparent that a revolutionary army composed solely of workers would be far too small, Trotsky instituted mandatory conscription of the rural peasantry into the Red Army.^[7] Opposition of rural Russians to Red Army conscription units was overcome by taking hostages and shooting them when necessary in order to force compliance,^[8] exactly the same practices used by the White Army officers.^[9] Former Tsarist officers were utilized as "military specialists" (voenspetsy),^[10] sometimes taking their families hostage in order to ensure loyalty.^[11] At the start of the war, three quarters of the Red Army officer corps was composed of former Tsarist officers.^[11] By its end, 83% of all Red Army divisional and corps commanders were ex-Tsarist soldiers.^[12]

Anti-Bolshevik movement[link]

While resistance to the Red Guard began on the very next day after the Bolshevik uprising, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and the political ban became a catalyst^[13] 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 forced conscriptions and terror^[9] and 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 was active in Ukraine in the early part of the war. More significant was the emergence of an anarchist political and military movement known as the Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Ukraine or the Anarchist Black Army led by Nestor Makhno. The Black Army, which counted numerous Jews and Ukrainian peasants in its ranks, played a key part in halting General Denikin's White Army offensive towards Moscow during 1919, later ejecting Cossack forces from the Crimea.

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

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

The Western Allies also expressed their dismay at the Bolsheviks, (1) upset at the withdrawal of Russia from the war effort, (2) worried about a possible Russo-German alliance, and perhaps most importantly (3) galvanised by the prospect of the Bolsheviks making good their threats to assume no responsibility for, and so default on, Imperial Russia's massive foreign loans; the legal notion of odious debt had not yet been formulated. 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. Winston Churchill declared that Bolshevism must be "strangled in its cradle".^[14] The British and the French had supported Russia 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. Under this pretext began allied intervention in the Russian Civil War with the United Kingdom and France sending troops into Russian ports. There were violent confrontations with troops loyal to the Bolsheviks.

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

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

Geography and chronology[link]

  Bolshevik control, February 1918

  Bolshevik control, Summer of 1918

  Maximum advance of the anti-Bolshevik armies

European theatre of the Russian Civil War

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,^[15] where the Volunteer Army began amassing support. The signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk also resulted in direct Allied intervention in Russia and the arming of military forces opposed to the Bolshevik government. There were also many German commanders who offered support against the Bolsheviks, fearing a confrontation with them was impending as well.

During this first period, the Bolsheviks took control of Central Asia out of the hands of the Provisional Government and White Army, setting up a base for the Communist Party in the Steppe and Turkestan, where nearly two million Russian settlers were located.^[16]

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",^[17] the Poles of the Polish 5th Rifle Division and the pro-Bolshevik Red Latvian riflemen.

The second period of the war lasted from January to November 1919. At first the White armies' advances from the south (under General Denikin), the east (under Admiral Kolchak) and the northwest (under General Yudenich) were successful, forcing the Red Army and its leftist allies back on all three fronts. In July 1919, the Red Army suffered another reverse after a mass defection of Red Army units in the Crimea to the anarchist Black 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 a Black Army offensive against White supply lines, the Red Army defeated Denikin's and Yudenich's armies in October and November.

The third period of the war was the extended siege of the last White forces in the Crimea. Wrangel had gathered the remnants of the Denikin's armies, occupying much of the Crimea. An attempted invasion of southern Ukraine was rebuffed by the anarchist Black Army under the command of Nestor Makhno. Pursued into the 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 Black Army forces; Wrangel and the remains of his army were evacuated to Constantinople in November 1920.

Warfare[link]

October Revolution[link]

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

Initial anti-Bolshevik uprisings[link]

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 quickly put down by the Red Guards, notably the Latvian rifle division.

The initial groups that fought against the Communists were local Cossack armies that had declared their loyalty to the Provisional Government. Kaledin of the Don Cossacks and Semenov of the Siberian Cossacks were prominent among them. The leading Tsarist officers of the old regime also started to resist. In November, General Alekseev, the Tsar's Chief-of-Staff during the First world war, began to organize the Volunteer Army in Novocherkassk. Volunteers of this small army were mostly officers of the old Russian army, military cadets and students. In December 1917, Alekseev was joined by 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.^[18] At the beginning of December 1917, groups of volunteers and Cossacks captured Rostov.

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.^[19] In April 1917, the Provisional Government set up this committee, which was mostly made up of former tsarist officials.^[20] The Bolsheviks attempted to take control of the Committee in Tashkent on September 12, 1917, but their mission was unsuccessful and many Bolshevik 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 due to public outcry and a successful takeover of this government body took place two months later in November.^[21] The success of the Bolshevik party over the Provisional Government during 1917 was mostly due to the support they received from the working class of Central Asia. The Leagues of Mohammedam Working People, which Russian setters 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.^[22]

However, after the Bolshevik destruction of the Provisional Government in Tashkent, Muslim elites formed an autonomous government in Turkestan, commonly called the ‘Kokand autonomy’ (or simply Kokand).^[23] The White Russians supported this government body, which lasted several months because of Bolshevik troop isolation from Moscow.^[24]

In January 1918 the Soviet forces under Lieutenant Colonel Muravyov invaded Ukraine and invested Kiev, where the Central Council of the Ukrainian People's Republic held power. With the help of the Kiev Arsenal Uprising, the Bolsheviks captured the city on 26 January.^[25]

Peace with the Central Powers[link]

The Bolsheviks decided to immediately make peace with the German Empire and the Central Powers, as they had promised the Russian people before the Revolution.^[26] Vladimir Lenin's political enemies attributed that decision to his sponsorship by the foreign office of Wilhelm II, German Emperor, offered to Lenin in hope that, with a revolution, Russia would withdraw from World War I. That suspicion was bolstered by the German Foreign Ministry's sponsorship of Lenin's return to Petrograd,^[27] but, after the military fiasco of the summer offensive (June 1917) by the Russian Provisional Government, the promise of peace had become all-powerful for Lenin to keep;^[28] and the failed summer offensive of the Provisional Government devastated the structure of the Russian Army.^[29] Even before the failed summer offensive the Russian population was very sceptical 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.^[30]

On 16 December 1917, an armistice was signed between Russia and the Central Powers in Brest-Litovsk and peace talks began.^[31] As a condition for peace, the proposed treaty by the Central Powers conceded huge portions of the former Russian Empire to the German Empire and the Ottoman Empire, greatly upsetting nationalists and conservatives. Leon Trotsky, representing the Bolsheviks, refused at first to sign the treaty while continuing to observe a unilateral cease fire, following the policy of "No war, no peace".^[3]

In view of this, on 18 February 1918, the Germans began Operation Faustschlag on the Eastern Front, encountering virtually no resistance in a campaign that lasted 11 days.^[3] 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 6 March. 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.

Ukraine, South Russia, and Caucasus 1918[link]

February 1918 article from The New York Times showing a map of the Russian Imperial territories claimed by Ukraine People's Republic at the time, before the annexation of the Austro-Hungarian lands of the West Ukrainian People's Republic.

Under Soviet pressure, the Volunteer Army embarked on the epic Ice March from Yekaterinodar to Kuban on 22 February 1918, where they joined with the Kuban Cossacks to mount an abortive assault on Yekaterinodar.^[32] The Soviets recaptured Rostov on the next day.^[33] General Kornilov was killed in the fighting on 13 April, and General Denikin took over the command. Fighting off its pursuers without respite, the army succeeded in breaking its way through back towards the Don, where the Cossack uprising against Bolsheviks had started.

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

In June 1918, the Volunteer Army, numbering some 9000 men, started its second Kuban campaign. Yekaterinodar was encircled on 1 August and fell on the 3rd. In September–October, heavy fighting took place at Armavir and Stavropol. On 13 October, General Kazanovich's division took Armavir and on November 1, general Pyotr Wrangel secured Stavropol. This time red forces had no escape and by the beginning of 1919, the whole Northern Caucasus was free from bolsheviks.

In October, General Alekseev, the leader for the White armies in Southern Russia, died of a heart attack. An agreement was reached between Denikin, head of the Volunteer Army, and P.N. Krasnov, Ataman of the Don Cossacks, which united their forces under the sole command of Denikin. The Armed Forces of South Russia were thus created.

Eastern Russia and Siberia 1918[link]

The Revolt of Czechoslovak Legion broke out in May 1918^[34] and the legionaries took control of Chelyabinsk in June. Simultaneously, the Russian officers' organisations overthrew the Bolsheviks in Petropavlovsk and Omsk. Within a month the Whites controlled most of the Trans-Siberian Railroad from Lake Baikal to the Ural regions. During the summer, the Bolshevik power in Siberia was totally wiped out. The Provisional Government of Autonomous Siberia was formed in Omsk.

By the end of July, the Whites had extended their gains, capturing Yekaterinburg on 26 July 1918. Shortly before the fall of Yekaterinburg on 17 July 1918, the former Tsar and his family were 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^{[citation needed]}. In May 1918, with the support of the Czechoslovak Legion, they took Samara and Saratov, establishing the Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly. 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.

After a series of reverses at the front, War Commissar Trotsky instituted increasingly harsh measures in order to prevent unauthorized withdrawals, desertions, or mutinies in the Red Army. In the field, the Cheka special investigations forces, termed the Special Punitive Department of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combat of Counter-Revolution and Sabotage, or Special Punitive Brigades followed the Red Army, conducting field tribunals and summary executions of soldiers and officers who either deserted, retreated from their positions, or who failed to display sufficient offensive zeal.^[35][36] The use of the death penalty was extended by Trotsky to the occasional political commissar whose detachment retreated or broke in the face of the enemy.^{[citation needed]} In August, frustrated at continued reports of Red Army troops breaking under fire, Trotsky authorized the formation of barrier troops stationed behind unreliable Red Army units, with orders to shoot anyone withdrawing from the battle line without authorization.^[37]

In September 1918, Komuch, Siberian Provisional Government and other local anti-Soviet governments met in Ufa and agreed to form a new Provisional All-Russian Government in Omsk, headed by a Directory of five: three Socialist-Revolutionaries (Nikolai Avksentiev, Boldyrev and Vladimir Zenzinov) and two Kadets, (V. A. Vinogradov and P. V. Vologodskii).

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

On the Volga, Kazan was captured by the colonel Kappel detachement on 7 August, but was recaptured by the Reds on September 8, following the Red counter-offensive. On the 11th, Simbirsk fell; and on 8 October, Samara. The Whites fell back to Ufa and Orenburg.

In Omsk, the Russian Provisional Government quickly came under the influence of the new War Minister, Rear-Admiral Kolchak. On 18 November, a coup d'état established Kolchak as dictator. The members of the Directory were arrested and Kolchak proclaimed the "Supreme Ruler of Russia".

By mid-December 1918, White armies in the East had to leave Ufa but this failure was balanced by the successful drive towards Perm. Perm was taken on 24 December.

Central Asia 1918[link]

In February 1918 the Red Army overthrew the White Russian-supported Kokand autonomy of Turkestan.^[38] Although this 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. Great Britain sent three prominent military leaders to the area. One was Lieutenant-Colonel Bailey, who recorded a mission to Tashkent, from where the Bolsheviks forced him to flee. Another was General Malleson, leading the Malleson Mission, 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 the Bolsheviks drove out of Central Asia only a month after his arrival in August 1918.^[39] Despite setbacks due to British invasions during 1918, the Bolsheviks continued to make progress in bringing the Central Asian population under the influence of their party. 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.^[40]

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

Left SR uprising[link]

In July, two Left SR and Cheka employees, Blyumkin and Andreyev, assassinated the German ambassador, Count Mirbach. In Moscow Left SR uprising was put down by the Bolsheviks, using the Cheka military detachments. Lenin personally apologised to the Germans for the assassination. Mass arrests of Socialist-Revolutionaries followed.

Estonia, Latvia, and Northern Russia 1919[link]

Estonia cleared its territory from the Red Army by January 1919.^[41] The Baltic German volunteers captured Riga from the Red Latvian Riflemen on 22 May, but the Estonian 3rd Army defeated them a month later, establishing the Republic of Latvia in power.^[42]

General Nikolai Yudenich.

In the meantime, the Red Army turned to deal with a new threat. This one came 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, which however complained that he was 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. He 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" that the White Army would be lost in a labyrinth of fortified streets and there "meet its grave".^[43]

Trotsky armed all available workers, men and women, ordering the transfer of military forces from Moscow. Within a few weeks the Red army defending Petrograd had tripled in size and outnumbered Yudenich three to one. At this point Yudenich, short of supplies, decided to call off the siege of the city, withdrawing his army across the border to Estonia. Upon his return, his army was disarmed by order of the Estonian government, fearful of reprisals by Moscow and its Red Army War Commissar, which turned out to be well-founded. However, the Estonian 1st Army repulsed the Bolshevik forces pursuing Yudenich's forces. Following the Treaty of Tartu most of Yudenich's soldiers went into exile.

The Finnish general Mannerheim planned a Finnish intervention to help the whites in Russia capture Petrograd. He did not, however, gain the necessary support for the endeavor. Lenin considered it "completely certain, that the slightest aid from Finland would have determined the fate of Petrograd".

The British occupied Murmansk and the British and the Americans occupied Arkhangelsk. With the retreat of Kolchak in Siberia, they pulled their troops out of the cities before the winter trapped their forces in the port.

Siberia 1919[link]

Admiral Kolchack reviewing the troops, 1919.

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

Following the abortive offensive at Chelyabinsk, the White armies withdrew beyond the Tobol. In September 1919, White offensive was launched against the Tobol front, the last attempt to change the course of events. But on 14 October, the Reds counterattacked and then began the uninterrupted retreat of the Whites to the East.

On 14 November 1919, the Red Army captured Omsk.^[44] Admiral Kolchak lost control of his government shortly after this defeat; White Army forces in Siberia essentially ceased to exist by December. Retreat of the Eastern front White armies lasted three months, until mid-February 1920, when the survivors, after crossing the Baikal, reached Chita area and joined Ataman Semenov's forces.

South Russia 1919[link]

The Cossacks had been unable to organize and capitalize on their successes at the end of 1918. By 1919 they had begun to run short of supplies. 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 3 February 1919.

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

Denikin's military strength continued to grow in the spring of 1919. During the several months in winter and spring of 1919, hard fighting with doubtful outcomes took place in the Donets basin where the attacking Bolsheviks met White forces. At the same time, Denikin's Armed Forces of South Russia (AFSR) completed the elimination of red forces in the Northern Caucasus and advanced towards Tsaritsyn. At the end of April and beginning of May, the AFSR attacked on all fronts from the Dnepr to the Volga and at the beginning of the summer they had won numerous battles. French forces landed in Odessa, but after having done almost no fighting, withdrew their troops on 8 April 1919. By mid-June the Reds were chased from the Crimea and from the Odessa area. Denikin's troops took the cities of Kharkov and Belgorod. At the same time White troops under Wrangel's command took Tsaritsyn on 17 June 1919. On 20 June, Denikin issued his famous "Moscow directive", ordering all AFSR units to get ready for a decisive offensive to take Moscow.

Although Great Britain had withdrawn its own troops from the theater, it continued to give significant military aid (money, weapons, food, ammunition, and some military advisors) to the White armies during 1919.

After the capture of Tsaritsyn, Wrangel pushed towards Saratov, but Trotsky, seeing the danger of the union with Kolchak, against whom the Red command was concentrating large masses of troops, repulsed his attempts with heavy losses. When the Kolchak's army in the East began to retreat in June and July, the bulk of the Red army, free now from any serious danger from Siberia, was directed against Denikin.

Denikin's forces constituted a real threat, and for a time threatened to reach Moscow. The Red Army, stretched thin by fighting on all fronts, was forced out of Kiev on 30 August. Kursk and Orel were taken. The Cossack Don Army under the command of General Konstantin Mamontov continued north towards Voronezh, but there Tukhachevsky's army defeated them on 24 October. Tukhachevsky's army then turned toward yet another threat, the rebuilt Volunteer Army of General Denikin.

The high tide of the White movement against the Soviets had been reached in September 1919. By this time Denikin's forces were dangerously overextended. The White front had no depth or stability: it had become a series of patrols with occasional columns of slowly advancing troops without reserves. Lacking ammunition, artillery, and fresh reinforcements, Denikin's army was decisively defeated in a series of battles in October and November 1919. The Red Army recaptured Kiev on 17 December and the defeated Cossacks fled back towards the Black Sea.

While the White Armies were being routed in the center and the east, they had succeeded in driving Nestor Makhno's anarchist Black Army (formally known as the Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Ukraine) out of part of southern Ukraine and the Crimea. Despite this setback, Moscow was loath to aid Makhno and the Black Army, and refused to provide arms to anarchist forces in Ukraine.

The main body of White forces, the Volunteers and the Don Army pulled back towards the Don, to Rostov. The smaller body (Kiev and Odessa troops) withdrew to Odessa and the Crimea, which it had managed to protect from the Bolsheviks during the winter of 1919-1920.

Central Asia 1919[link]

By February 1919 the British government had pulled their military forces out of Central Asia.^[45] Despite this 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 the Red Army forces in Siberia.^[46] Although this 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 this conference a regional bureau of Muslim organizations of the Russian Bolshevik Party was formed. The Bolshevik Party continued to try and gain support among the native population by giving them the impression of better representation for the Central Asian population, and throughout the end of the year were able to maintain harmony with the Central Asian people.^[47]

Communication difficulties with the Red Army forces in Siberia and European Russia ceased to be a problem by mid-November 1919. Due to Red Army success north of Central Asia, communication with Moscow was re-established and the Bolsheviks were able to claim victory over the White Army in Turkestan.^[46]

South Russia, Ukraine, and Kronstadt 1920-21[link]

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, rest and reform his troops. But the White Army was not able to hold the Don area, and at the end of February 1920 started a retreat across Kuban towards Novorossiysk. Slipshod evacuation of Novorossiysk proved to be a dark event for the White Army. About 40,000 men were evacuated by Russian and Allied ships from Novorossiysk to Crimea, without horses or any heavy equipment, while about 20,000 men were left behind and either dispersed or captured by the Red Army.

Following the disastrous Novorossiysk evacuation, Denikin stepped down, and the military council elected Wrangel as the new Commander-in-Chief of the White Army. He was able to restore order with dispirited troops and reshape an army that could fight as a regular force again. This remained an organized force in the Crimea throughout 1920.

After Moscow's Bolshevik government signed a military and political alliance with Nestor Makhno and the Ukrainian anarchists, the Black Army attacked and defeated several regiments of Wrangel's troops in southern Ukraine, forcing him to retreat before he could capture that year's grain harvest.^[48] Stymied in his efforts to consolidate his hold, Wrangel then attacked north in an attempt to take advantage of recent Red Army defeats at the close of the Polish-Soviet War of 1919-1920. This offensive was eventually halted by the Red Army, and Wrangel's troops were forced to retreat to Crimea in November 1920, pursued by both the Red and Black cavalry and infantry. Wrangel and the remains of his army were evacuated from Crimea to Constantinople on 14 November 1920. Thus ended the struggle of Reds and Whites in Southern Russia.

After the defeat of Wrangel, the Red Army immediately repudiated its 1920 treaty of alliance with Nestor Makhno and attacked the anarchist Black Army; the campaign to liquidate Makhno and the Ukrainian anarchists began with an attempted assassination of Makhno by the Cheka agents. Angered by continued repression by the Bolshevik Communist government and its liberal use of the Cheka to put down peasant and anarchist elements, a naval mutiny erupted at Kronstadt, followed by peasant revolts. Red Army attacks on the anarchist forces and their sympathizers increased in ferocity throughout 1921. Trotsky instituted mass executions of peasants in Ukraine and other areas sympathetic to Makhno and the anarchists.

Siberia and the Far East 1920-22[link]

In Siberia, Admiral Kolchak's army had disintegrated. He himself gave up command after the loss of Omsk and designated Grigory Semyonov as the new leader of the White Army in Siberia. Not long after this, Kolchak was arrested by the disaffected Czechoslovak Corps as he traveled towards Irkutsk without the protection of the army and turned over to the socialist Political Centre in Irkutsk. Six days later, this 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 thrown through the ice of the frozen river Angara, just before the arrival of the White Army in the area.^[49]

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

Aftermath[link]

Ensuing rebellion[link]

In central Asia, Red Army troops continued to face resistance into 1923, where basmachi (armed bands of Islamic guerrillas) had formed to fight the Bolshevik takeover. The Soviets engaged non-Russian peoples in Central Asia like Magaza Masanchi, commander of the Dungan Cavalry Regiment to fight against the Basmachis. The Communist Party did not completely dismantle this group until 1934.^[50]

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.

Casualties[link]

Swiss woman and her daughters escaping Russian Civil War around 1921

The results of the civil war were momentous. Soviet demographer Boris Urlanis estimated total number of men killed in action in Civil War and Polish-Soviet war as 300,000 (125,000 in the Red Army, 175,500 White armies and Poles) and total number of military personnel died from disease (on both sides) as 450,000.^[51]

During the Red Terror, the Cheka carried out an estimated 250,000 summary executions of "enemies of the people".^[52][53]

Some 300,000–500,000 Cossacks were killed or deported during Decossackization, out of a population of around three million.^[54] An estimated 100,000 Jews were killed in Ukraine, mostly by the White Army.^[55] Punitive organs of the All Great Don Cossack Host sentenced 25,000 people to death between May 1918 and January 1919.^[56] Kolchak's government shot 25,000 people in Ekaterinburg province alone.^[57]

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 pogroms against Jews in Ukraine and southern Russia. By 1922, there were at least 7,000,000 street children in Russia as a result of nearly 10 years of devastation from the Great War and the civil war.^[58]

Refugees on flatcars.

Another one to two million people, known as the White émigrés, fled Russia—many with General Wrangel, some through the Far East, others 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."^{[citation needed]}

It is estimated that the total output of mines and factories in 1921 had fallen to 20% of the pre–World War level, and many crucial items experienced an even more drastic decline. For example, cotton production fell to 5%, and iron to 2% of pre-war levels.

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

As the British historian Orlando Figes put it, at the root of the Whites' defeat was a failure of politics, more precisely their own dismal failure to break with the ugly past of the oppressive Tsarist régime.^[59]

See also[link]

Soviet Union

This article is part of the series: Politics and government of the Soviet Union

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Atlas  USSR Portal view talk edit

• Timeline of the Russian Civil War

In fiction[link]

Literature[link]

• The Road to Calvary (1922–41) by Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy
• Chapaev (1923) by Dmitri Furmanov
• The Iron Flood (1924) by Alexander Serafimovich
• Red Cavalry (1926) by Isaac Babel
• The Rout (1927) by Alexander Fadeyev
• How the Steel Was Tempered (1934) by Nikolai Ostrovsky
• Optimistic Tragedy (1934) by Vsevolod Vishnevsky
• The Don Flows Home to the Sea (1940) by Mikhail Sholokhov
• Doctor Zhivago (1957) by Boris Pasternak
• The White Guard (1966) by Mikhail Bulgakov
• Byzantium Endures (1981) by Michael Moorcock
• Fall of Giants (novel) (1981) by Ken Follett
• Chevengur (novel) (written in 1927, first published in 1988 in the USSR) by Andrei Platonov.

Film[link]

• Arsenal (1928)
• Storm Over Asia (1928)
• Chapaev (1934)
• Thirteen (1936), directed by Mikhail Romm
• We Are From Kronstadt, directed by Yefim Dzigan
• Knight Without Armour (1937)
• The Year 1919 (1938), directed by Ilya Trauberg
• The Baltic Marines (1939), directed by A.Faintsimmer
• Shchors (1939), directed by Dovzhenko
• Pavel Korchagin (1956), directed by A. Alov and V.Naumov
• The Wind (1958), directed by A.Alov and V.Naumov
• Doctor Zhivago (1965)
• The Elusive Avengers (1966)
• The Red and the White (1967)
• Reds (1981)
• Corto Maltese in Siberia (2002)
• Admiral (2008)
• Тихий Дон

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Vladimir N. Brovkin. Behind the Front Lines of the Civil War: Political Parties and Social Movements in Russia, 1918-1922. Princeton University Press, 1994. ISBN 0-691-03278-5
• T.N. Dupuy. The Encyclopedia of Military History (many editions) Harper & Row Publishers.
• Peter Kenez. Civil War in South Russia, 1918: The First Year of the Volunteer Army, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1971.
• Peter Kenez. Civil War in South Russia, 1919-1920: The Defeat of the Whites, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1977.
• W. Bruce Lincoln. Red Victory.
• Evan Mawdsley. The Russian Civil War. New York: Pegasus Books, 2007.
• George Stewart. The White Armies of Russia: A Chronicle of Counter-Revolution and Allied Intervention.
• David R. Stone. "The Russian Civil War, 1917-1921," in The Military History of the Soviet Union.
• Geoffrey Swain. The Origins of the Russian Civil War.

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Civil war of Russia

• Russian Revolution and Civil War archive at libcom.org/library
• "BBC History of the Russian Revolution" (3 February 2007)
• "Russian Civil War" (Spartacus History, downloaded 3 January 2006)
• "Russian Civil War 1918-1920" (On War website, downloaded 4 January 2006)
• "Civil War of 1917 - 1922 at Encyclopedia of Russian History (3 February 2007)
• "Russian Civil War Polities" (World Statesmen.org, downloaded 16 February 2007)