Most foreign powers refused to recognise the legitimacy of the Bolshevik regime, dealing instead with White generals in exile. There was opposition to the Bolsheviks after the October Revolution but it intensified after the closure of the Constituent Assembly (January 1918) and the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (March 1918). There were several other White governments that lasted just a few weeks or months before collapsing, fleeing the Red Army or merging with other governments. 1. The civil war occurred because after November 1917, many groups had formed that opposed Lenin’s Bolsheviks. (Image source: WikiMedia Commons). As a result, the Whites failed to win support from the people or present themselves as an alternative to the Soviet regime. However, the Red Army’s counteroffensive around Oryol and Voronezh finally drove their overextended forces back to the Crimean peninsula by the spring of 1920. The Russian Civil War of 1917-1920, out of which the Soviet Union was born, was one of the most significant events of the twentieth century. These short-lived White governments were based in Ekaterinburg, Novorossiysk, Priamuraye, Pskov, Sevastopol and Transbaikal. Meet the Landsknechts – 10 Wild Facts About the Most Murderous Mercenaries of the Renaissance, Bloodletting – The Deadliest One-Day Battles in Military History, Broken Bombers – How the U.S. Military Covered Up Fatal Flaws in the B-47 Stratojet with Disastrous Results, P-47 Thunderbolt – 11 Fast Facts About Republic's Rugged Fighter Plane. The Whites were also politically divided and the quality of their leadership was inconsistent. Canadian troops of the Siberian Expedition, 1919. The Russian Civil War began with growing resistance to the Bolshevik regime that seized control of Russia in October 1917. Kolchak’s arrest and execution in February 1920 was an important turning point, while the retreat of Wrangel‘s army from southern Russia in November 1920 marked the Bolshevik victory in European Russia. It was a brutal conflict that produced terror, war crimes and human suffering on catastrophic levels. It contains 179,175 words in 288 pages and was updated on October 10th 2020. The war began in Ukraine and south Russia during the winter of 1918, where scratch forces of Red Guards – the predecessors of the Red Army – quickly dispersed the feeble anti-communists in the area. Post was not sent - check your email addresses! In the weeks that followed, the Czech Legion continued its revolt against Bolshevik authority, seizing control of towns and stations along the Trans-Siberian Railway. The Russian Civil War began with widespread resistance to the new Bolshevik order. 1. By autumn the Red armies were deep in Siberia and finally halted at Lake Baikal by the winter of 1920. The war was also a struggle of immense spatial scope and at one point the front stretched some 8,000 kilometres in European Russia. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of any material on this site without express and written permission from the author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. The Civil War was born of anti-Bolshevik activity following the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, the closure of the Constituent Assembly and the revolt of the Czech Legion. Like other internecine conflicts, the Russian Civil War was marked by periods of confusion and great division, shifting loyalties and intense propaganda. The civil war was fought mostly by Russians loyal to (or forced to fight for) Lenin's communist Bolsheviks against a motley collection of militias known as … White disorganisation and disunity was another factor. Copyright: The content on this page may not be republished without our express permission. The Civil War was fought on several fronts by different leaders and groups, each with different political ideals and objectives. Free shipping . This civil war is often said to have started in 1918, but bitter fighting began in 1917. Yet another White government was based in Arkhangelsk, a White Sea port city, 700 miles north-west of St Petersburg. Various fronts of the Russian Civil War, 1919. Some misguided historians believe the US intervention in the Russian Civil War was an imperialistic adventure. Fighting intensified in the summer of 1918, when the action spread to the eastern periphery of the Bolsheviks’ territory. The most significant groups involved in the Civil War were the Bolsheviks and their Red Army, and a loose coalition of anti-Bolshevik groups known as the Whites or White armies. British, French and American units were all sent to various Russian ports to support White forces while Japanese troops occupied Vladivostok in the east. The White armies fought as separate units and were unable or unwilling to coordinate their strategy or offensives. The White Army opposed the communists. The Poles chose to attack in Ukraine in the spring of 1920 as Soviet Russia lay nearly prostrate following two years of civil war. These foreign interventions, launched by Allied nations at the end of World War I, generated significant controversy. This book offers an account of the first phase of the civil war that followed the Bolshevik seizure of power in Petrograd in 1917. Rarely did foreign units directly engage the Bolsheviks on their own. 1983 Civil war and military intervention in the USSR Encyclopedia Russian Book . Ultimately, the political divisions and military problems of the White movement, along with the Bolsheviks maintaining control of European Russia and its industrial centres, allowed the Bolsheviks to secure victory in 1921. Some of these groups established counter-revolutionary regimes, usually based in a particular city or region. At the same time, Russia’s former allies – Britain, France, the United States and Canada, among others – landed forces at Murmansk and Archangel, thus opening a front in this area. The catalyst for the outbreak of civil war was an uprising by Czech Legion. To tsarists, liberals, Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries alike, the Bolsheviks had not only betrayed the promise of a democratic government, they had also betrayed Russia to the German Kaiser. The Bolshevik victory ensured the supremacy of the Russian Communists in the nascent Soviet Union. With the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in March 1918, the Bolsheviks became not just traitors to the war but a political threat to democratic-capitalist nations. Swain provides the reader with a picture of the extraordinarily complicated developments that init… The main fighting was between the Red Army and the White Army. The Russian Civil War (1918-21) was a long struggle for the control of Russia. The Provisional Government of the Northern Regions, as it was known, was headed by Nikolai Tchaikovsky, though it recognised the supremacy of Kolchak and his government. 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 catalystfor the formation of anti-Bolshevik groups both inside and outside Russia, pushing them into action against the new regime. These fronts alternated in significance throughout the war, with the Reds sometimes attacking and sometimes defending. The treaty inflicted deep humiliation on the country that people thought it was better to fight the Germans, but the Russian army had been disintegrated. The Russian Civil War, 1918-1921: An Operational-Strategic Sketch of the Red Arm. Immediately after the two Revolutions of 1917, the Civil War broke out in the former Russian Empire. However, the Reds themselves were soon driven out by the advancing German army, which occupied the territory later that spring as a result of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. World War I was very hard on the Russian Empire. The Russian Civil War (November 1917 – October 1922) was a multi-party war in the former Russian Empire immediately after the Russian Revolutions of 1917, as … The Bolshevik propaganda campaign was also more successful. Here is the whole story. German and Russian soldiers mingle on eve of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, 1918. Copyright © 2020 MilitaryHistoryNow.com. There had been opposition to the Bolsheviks after the October Revolution but this intensified after the closure of the Constituent Assembly (January 1918) and the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (March 1918). 1. Publisher: Alpha History Polish soldiers gathered to repel the Red Army, 1920. Other, lesser fronts also flared up from time to time. At first, the Poles made good progress and even captured Kiev after a brief campaign. The Origins of the Russian Civil War. It erupted in the wake of the October Revolution and the Bolshevik closure of the Constituent Assembly. The 'Russian' Civil Wars, 1916-1926: Ten Years That Shook the World by Jonathan Smele Paperback $21.95 Customers who viewed this item also viewed Page 1 of 1 Start over Page 1 of 1 This shopping feature will continue to load items when the Enter key is pressed. (Image source: WikiMedia Commons). In 1863… He later earned his doctorate in War Studies from King’s College London. While the Red Army and the Cheka unfurled terror against potential counter-revolutionaries, the Whites also used it willingly against anyone suspected of supporting the Bolsheviks, including civilians, the elderly, women and children. THE RUSSIAN CIVIL War, which ended 100 years ago with the establishment of a totalitarian communist regime in the former Russian Empire, was one of the most fateful struggles of the 20 th century, yielding perhaps only to the two world wars in its significance. The communists, known collectively as the Bolsheviks, or Reds, sought to construct a new, collectivist society on the ruins of the old Russian Empire. Hope everybody can follow this. Behind the White armies emerged a political movement, a loose coalition comprised of monarchists, liberals, non-Bolshevik socialists and disgruntled peasants. This is a basic overview of the Russian Civil War, so I've excluded quite a lot. For more information on usage, please refer to our Terms of Use. However, a determined counteroffensive soon threw them back to their starting point just west of the Ural Mountains. He also was an exchange student in the former Soviet Union and spent several years living and working in post-communist Russia. Title: “The Russian Civil War 1918-21” This Russian Revolution site contains articles, sources and perspectives on events in Russia between 1891 and 1927. $45.00. This gave them better access to infrastructure, communications and supply lines. By late 1918, World War I had come to an end and nobody wanted to commit large troop numbers to another major conflict. This essentially concluded the Russian civil war, although there remained isolated centers of resistance in Central Asia and the Far East. The struggle pitted two irreconcilable parties against each other. After this coup d’etat, command of the government passed to Alexander Kolchak, a former tsarist naval commander. By Jennifer L. Weber WHEN ABRAHAM LINCOLN TOOK OFFICE IN MARCH 1861, the executive branch was small and relatively limited in its power. Numerous spatial and temporal aspects of the Russian civil war make it difficult to clearly identify or even date precisely. Richard W. Harrison was a co-editor and translator of The Russian Civil War, 1918-1921. Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window), Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window), Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window), Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window), Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window), Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window), Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window), Click to share on Skype (Opens in new window), a broad spectrum of counterrevolutionary political currents, Russia’s withdrawal from the First World War, a national war that pitted a reborn Polish state against its former Russian overlords, The Russian Civil War, 1918-1921. In November, a group of Cossack officers, encouraged and backed by the British, arrested the Ufa executive and forced them into exile. These phony historians pick out certain facts and ignore others to give you an inaccurate view of what really happened. Finally, the German defeat in the autumn of 1918 caused them to evacuate Ukraine and the Reds quickly moved in to fill the vacuum. The Bolshevik mission was to establish a soviet socialist republic across Russia. 2. The largest of these White contingents was Anton Denikin’s Volunteer Army in southern Russia, which at its peak in mid-1919 numbered around 40,000 men. The Russian Civil War raged from 1918 until the start of 1921. That the Whites used similar methods to the Bolsheviks did not help their cause. Main article: October Revolution (Central Victory)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 for… Strictly speaking, the Polish front had nothing to do with the civil war and its emphasis on class forces. The Russian Civil War – Inside the Murky Conflict that Shaped the 20th Century militaryhistorynow.com - By Richard W. Harrison. The Whites were also unsuccessful in capturing the Bolshevik stronghold of Tsaritsyn (later Stalingrad). They were joined by other groups, including former tsarist officers and loyalist militias. Russian Revolution memory quiz – events 1907-1916, Russian Revolution memory quiz – events 1917, Russian Revolution memory quiz – events 1918-1924, Russian Revolution memory quiz – revolutionaries, Russian Revolution memory quiz – tsarists, Russian Revolution memory quiz: concepts (I), Russian Revolution memory quiz: concepts (II), Russian Revolution memory quiz: events 1906 to 1913, Russian Revolution memory quiz: events 1914 to 1916, Russian Revolution memory quiz: events to 1905. For more information, visit our FAQ page or Terms of Use. Anti-Bolshevik Russian soldiers in 1919. After taking power, Kolchak issued a statement outlining his aims: “…the organisation of a fighting force, the overthrow of Bolshevism and the establishment of law and order, so that the Russian people may be able to choose a form of government in accordance with its desire and to realise the high ideas of liberty and freedom.”. Rather it was a national war that pitted a reborn Polish state against its former Russian overlords, who appeared this time in the guise of social revolution. THE RUSSIAN CIVIL War, which ended 100 years ago with the establishment of a totalitarian communist regime in the former Russian Empire, was one of the most fateful struggles of the 20th century, yielding perhaps only to the two world wars in its significance.
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