The Russian Civil War and the Birth of the Soviet Union

The Russian Civil War of 1918-1922 was one of the most brutal conflicts of the twentieth century, fought between the Bolshevik Red Army and a loose coalition of anti-Bolshevik forces known as the White Movement. The war was triggered by the Bolshevik seizure of power in the October Revolution of 1917, and it involved foreign intervention, peasant revolts, and a devastating famine that killed millions of people. The war ended with the Bolshevik victory and the establishment of the Soviet state, which would rule Russia for the next seven decades.

The Russian Civil War was a turning point in Russian history. It marked the end of the imperial system and the beginning of the Soviet period, and it shaped the development of Russia and the world for the rest of the twentieth century. The war also had an impact on the Russian population, with millions of deaths from combat, disease, and famine, and it left a deep mark on the Russian national consciousness.

The causes of the war

The Russian Civil War was the result of a complex interplay of factors, including the deep social, economic, and political tensions of the late imperial period, the Bolshevik seizure of power, and the resistance of the various political and social groups that opposed the Bolsheviks. The war was also influenced by the international situation, with the foreign powers intervening on the side of the White Movement in an attempt to prevent the spread of communism.

The Bolshevik seizure of power in October 1917 was the immediate cause of the civil war. The Bolsheviks had come to power through a combination of popular support and armed insurrection, but they were opposed by a wide range of political and social groups, including the moderate socialists, the liberals, the conservatives, the monarchists, the national minorities, the various peasant and Cossack groups, and the various religious and ethnic minorities. The Bolsheviks responded to this opposition with a policy of repression, including the establishment of the Cheka secret police, the suppression of the Constituent Assembly, and the implementation of radical social and economic measures.

The civil war was also shaped by the international situation. The major foreign powers, including the United States, Britain, France, and Japan, intervened in the war on the side of the White Movement, in an attempt to prevent the spread of communism and to restore the Eastern Front in the First World War. The foreign intervention gave the White Movement important supplies and support, but it also undermined the legitimacy of the White cause, which was increasingly seen as a foreign-backed attempt to restore the old order.

The Red Army and the White Movement

The Red Army was organized by the Bolsheviks under the leadership of Leon Trotsky, who was appointed the People’s Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs and the chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council. Trotsky built the Red Army from scratch, using a combination of volunteer recruitment, conscription, and the use of former imperial army officers as military specialists. The Red Army eventually grew to about 5 million men, and it was organized into a highly centralized and disciplined force.

The White Movement was a loose coalition of anti-Bolshevik forces, including monarchists, liberals, and various political and military leaders. The most important White leaders were Aleksandr Kolchak, who controlled Siberia and parts of the Urals, Anton Denikin, who controlled southern Russia, and Nikolai Yudenich, who operated in the northwest. The White Movement was divided by political and regional differences, and it was unable to develop a unified strategy or a coordinated command.

The Red Army eventually prevailed, partly because of its greater unity and discipline, partly because it controlled the central Russian heartland with its population and resources, and partly because it was able to mobilize the workers and the poorer peasants, who were the main beneficiaries of the Bolshevik revolution. The White Movement, by contrast, was increasingly identified with the old order and the foreign intervention, and it was unable to win the support of the mass of the Russian population.

The course of the war

The Russian Civil War was fought on multiple fronts and involved a complex series of campaigns. The most important theaters were the eastern front, where the Red Army fought against Kolchak and the Czechoslovak Legion, the southern front, where the Red Army fought against Denikin and then Wrangel, the northwestern front, where the Red Army fought against Yudenich, and the Polish front, where the Red Army fought against Poland in 1920.

The first major campaign of the war was the Czechoslovak Legion revolt of 1918, in which the Czechoslovak soldiers, who had been fighting on the side of the Entente in the First World War, revolted against the Bolsheviks and seized control of the Trans-Siberian Railway. The revolt was a challenge to the Bolshevik government, and it required the Red Army to fight on the eastern front. The Czechoslovak forces were eventually evacuated, but the revolt contributed to the expansion of the civil war and the intervention of the foreign powers.

The most important campaign of the war was the Kolchak offensive of 1919, in which the White forces in the east attempted to capture Moscow. The offensive was initially successful, but the Red Army eventually counterattacked and drove the White forces back across the Urals. The defeat of Kolchak was a turning point in the war, and it was followed by the defeat of Denikin in the south and Yudenich in the northwest.

The war was also accompanied by a major peasant uprising, the Tambov Rebellion of 1920-1921, in which the peasants of the Tambov region revolted against Bolshevik policies. The rebellion was suppressed by the Red Army with great brutality, and it was an example of the social tensions that the Bolsheviks faced even in the areas they controlled.

The Polish-Soviet War of 1920-1921 was another episode of the civil war period. The Polish forces, under the command of Józef Piłsudski, invaded Ukraine and captured Kiev in May 1920, but the Red Army counterattacked and pushed the Polish forces back to the gates of Warsaw. The Battle of Warsaw in August 1920, known as the “Miracle on the Vistula,” was a Polish victory, and it forced the Bolsheviks to accept a peace treaty that was less favorable than they had hoped.

The Red Terror and the White Terror

The Russian Civil War was marked by extraordinary brutality on both sides. The Bolsheviks employed a policy known as the “Red Terror” against suspected counter-revolutionaries, with the Cheka and the revolutionary tribunals conducting mass arrests, executions, and deportations. The most famous episode of the Red Terror was the execution of the imperial family at Yekaterinburg in July 1918, but the Red Terror involved the deaths of tens of thousands of people, including many innocent victims.

The White armies also committed atrocities, particularly against the Jewish population of the areas they controlled. The most notorious episodes were the pogroms in Ukraine, where the White forces and the various Ukrainian nationalist groups murdered tens of thousands of Jews. The White armies also committed atrocities against the workers and the suspected Bolsheviks, and they often relied on terror to maintain control of the populations they conquered.

The war was also accompanied by a devastating famine, the Russian famine of 1921-1922, which was caused by the disruption of agriculture, the breakdown of transportation, and the policies of the Bolshevik government, including the policy of “war communism” that had required the peasants to surrender their surplus grain to the state. The famine killed millions of people, and it was one of the worst famines in Russian history.

The establishment of the Soviet Union

The civil war ended with the Bolshevik victory and the establishment of the Soviet state. The last major White forces were defeated in the autumn of 1920, and the Bolsheviks gradually established their control over the former Russian Empire, with the exception of Finland, the Baltic states, and Poland, which had won their independence, and Bessarabia, which had been annexed by Romania in 1918.

The Soviet state was organized as a federation of nominally equal republics. The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) was the largest of the republics, and it included the bulk of the former Russian Empire. The Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, and the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic were the other republics. In 1922, these republics were formally united as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), with Moscow as the capital.

The establishment of the Soviet Union marked the formal end of the Russian Empire and the beginning of a new era in Russian history. The Soviet state was organized on the principle of democratic centralism, with the Communist Party as the leading political institution. The state pursued a program of radical social transformation, including the nationalization of large-scale industry and the suppression of religion, although in 1922 it was in the midst of a tactical retreat under the New Economic Policy, which permitted small-scale private trade and peasant agriculture; the collectivization of agriculture and the full development of a planned economy would come only at the end of the decade. The Soviet state also pursued a policy of international revolution, supporting communist movements around the world and seeking to expand the Soviet system to other countries.

The legacy of the civil war

The human and material costs of the civil war were staggering. Beyond the millions of deaths from combat, disease, and famine, the war devastated the Russian economy, scattered hundreds of thousands of émigrés across Europe and Asia, and brutalized political life in ways that would shape the Soviet system for decades.

The war’s political weight was felt immediately in the character of the Soviet state it created: the Red Army’s command structure became the template for Soviet military organisation; Cheka techniques developed during the war became standard practice for the security services; and the famine of 1921-1922, which killed an estimated five million people, was the direct economic consequence of war communism. Historians disagree on how far the brutalization of the civil war shaped Stalinism: Richard Pipes argued in Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime (1994) that terror was implicit in Leninist ideology from the outset; Sheila Fitzpatrick, in The Russian Revolution (1982), saw Stalinism as a radicalization that went beyond the civil-war settlement rather than a straight continuation of it.