Sides
- Although there were over 18 anti-Bolshevik governments in Russia at one point, there were 3 major groups:
1) Reds (Bolsheviks):
- One aim: to stay in power. “Worker’s and Peasant’s Red army formed from Kronstadt, also soldiers from former imperial army.
2) Whites:
Broad, all anti-Bolshevik: liberals, formal tsarists, nationalists, separatists, socialist revolutionaries, moderate socialists. Many divisions because of this. Few wanted Tsar back, but all wanted military dictatorship until Bolsheviks gave up power. Socialist revolutionaries wanted a Constituent Assembly. Held office under provisional government. Joined by Cossacks and Kadets.
3) Greens
Peasant armies, deserters from army. Some for some against Bolsheviks. Concerned with protecting their own area from armies, some were bandits
Civil War
- Began in spring of 1918
- Bolsheviks wanted to run Russia as a one-party state, alienated socialist groups, liberals, conservatives
- Czech legion: formed by Czech and Slovak nationalists to gain independence and war prisoners. Planned to fight Russians, later fought allies when Russia pulled out of the war. Agreed with Bolsheviks to be transported to western front along Trans-Siberian Railway, clashed resulted in Czech’s control of major sections of the railway, joined by white forces.
- 3 major white forces threatened Bolsheviks: Yudenich in West, Kolchak in east, Denikin/Wrangel in South (pg 82)
- Allied tropps sent to Russia to reopen eastern front against Germany, tried to help whites, no effective actions occures
- British sent supplies to Whites
Russo- Polish War (1919-1921)
- Poles tried to seize former territory
- Initially successful: captured Kiev in 1920, but by theis time the Bolsheviks had won civil war.
- Polish invasion resulted in non-Bolshevik support for the party because of the common enemy
- Poles pushed back to Warsaw by Front led by Tukhachevsky
- Lenin hoped Bolshevik success would encourage revolution in Germany, and although Germany was unstable and had set up red soviets, the reds were lacking supplies, support, and were defeated by the Poles.
- Settlement in 1921: Treaty of Riga: Russia surrendered large areas of white Russia and Ukraine to Poles
Trotsky
- Commissar for War in 1918
- Army was in disintegration, restored discipline, returned it to effective military force
- Reorganized army by hierarchical lines, brought back Tsarist officers, held families hostage to ensure loyalty
- Resented by other leading Bolsheviks: Stalin and Zinoviev- had different concept of revolutionary army that was more like a militia than a Tsarist army
- Trotsky got his way with support of Lenin, who believed it was the only solution due to the state of the army and urgency of situation
- To placate party and ensure loyalty from officers, Trotsky placed political commissar to each army unit, to monitor actions of officers to ensure they were politically correct
- Soldier’s committees and elections of officers by soldiers ended, changed ranks and wages, re-establishment of harsh military discipline, returned death penalty
- Formed labor battalions, made up of bourgeois
- Saved Petrograd when under threat from Yudenich
Red Amry
- Made of urban workers and peasants
- Although peasants were willing to fight for their land, they were generally unwilling conscripts: deserted at harvest time, staged uprisings in response to mass conscription by Reds, amny joined green armies
- Rates of desertion were just as high in reds and whites
- When peasants deserted, took uniform and weapons with them, resulting in the red army being poorly equipped
- Because of this, Trotsky’s train carrying uniforms and supplies was important
- Large amount of indiscipline: officers were murdered, anti-Semitism although many of the commissars were Jewish, including Trotsky
White Army
Division:
- Kolchak had many socialist revolutionaries arrested, which resulted in them staging results and undermining his campaign
Lack of Support:
- Southern Volunteer army, led by Denikin was misled: believed they were fighting for old order, but Don Cossaks only wanted independence for their own region
- United against Bolsheviks, but did not share central command and kept separate units
- Denikin did not make concession to national aspirations
- Brutality of white armies antagonized peasants, especially Cossacks in Southern army- ethnic cleansing of peasants
- Peasants deserted white army by thousands, helped by Volunteer army and helped by Denikin. This resulted in peasants opposing whites
- Whites were identified with old Tsarist army, so although they held support from Kadets and Rightests, lost support of workers and peasants
Red Army: Why they won
Geographical factors
- Bolshevik control of central area- Moscow and Petrograd. Moved capital to Moscow, which was center of railway network, and helped to transport materials to army.
- This area contained major factories, enabling them to produce war materials. Much of the old military equipment from the Tsarist army fell into the hands of the Bolsheviks.
- Central area was heavily populated, (much more than white areas): able to conscript large numbers for army.
- Whites were scattered along edges of central area, separated by large distances. Resulted in difficulties communicating and moving weapons.
Unity/Organization
- Bolsheviks had single, unifies command structure
- Trotsky organized army: more effective and disciplined than the whites
- Whites were made of different groups with different beliefs, could not agree what they were fighting for. Split on views of national minorities. This made it hard to decide on a political and military strategy: white generals would not work together because they did not trust each other.
Leadership:
- Trotsky was excellent leader: brave, took his special forces to parts of Front where fighting was hardest. Inspired army.
- Heavy discipline in red army: peasants knew if they retreated they faced the death penalty.
- White leaders were second-rate: cruel to men. Many soldiers deserted.
- Large amount indiscipline and corruption in white army: uniforms and weapons provided by foreign governments sold on black market, officers on drugs/sex.
Support:
- Peasants support was crucial because they made up main body of soldiers for both sides. Peasants wanted to desert from both sides, but Lenin legitimized their right to the land while White’s said land would be restored to its former owner- support of Reds.
- White’s lost support of nationalist groups; wanted to restore Russia with its pre-1917 borders, which antagonized national groups (separatists) like Ukraine and Georgia looking for independence. This resulted in no support from separatists, which occupied the territory the whites were based in.
- Reds had support group of workers and soldiers but did not hold popular support because of war communism and the way the reds handled food supply and cities. However, workers and peasants wanted to protect gains of 1917, and since the whites were associated with the old form of government, saw supporting reds as the best way to do this.
Other factors:
- Although foreign intervention gave whites supplies, it was ineffective. Gave Bolsheviks propaganda coup because they could present themselves as defending Russia against foreign forces.
- Reds used more imaginative and powerful propaganda.
Russian Life in Civil War
- Central authority disappeared, fighting fronts were unstable, military units changed sides between whites and reds
- Cossacks in South raped/murdered villages of Jews in pogroms, claiming Jews supported the Bolsheviks
- In Donbass region, white shot minors that did not produce enough coal
- Typhus spread rapidly, killing over 1 million in 1920
War Communism
- While Trotsky led civil war, Lenin built and consolidated Bolshevik state, including dealing with the economy deterioration in spring 1918
- To ensure survival in first months after October revolution, Bolsheviks gave control of land to peasants and control of factories to worker committees
- There were shortages of raw materials because of civil war
- Industrial output, mainly consumer goods, shrank in Bolshevik central area
- Resulted in inflation, value of rouble collapsed
- Peasants would not supply food to the cities if no goods were provided in return and paper money was worthless
- Rich wheat areas of Ukraine were outside of Bolshevik control
- Food riots in many cities in early 1918
- Workers left cities, factories were short of workers
- Lenin was faced with 2 problems:
Keeping workers in cities to produce war supplies.
Feeding workers.
- Aside from economic problems, Lenin faced other problems: the whole economy of the red-area Russia was focused on was geared towards army
War Communism- reaction of pressures to run the economy to continue the war
- Called “internal front”- extension of class warfare, aim to wipe out bourgeois and counter-revolutionaries
- Happy to see market economy collapse in 1918- believed the only way to communism was through socialism
- Wanted nationalization of industry and state control
- Reluctance to abandon when civil war ended: Trotsky wanted to draft soldiers into factories and fields to work under military discipline Features of War Communism: “decree on nationalization”- control of all econonomic production and distribution, outlawed private trade, printing large quantities of bank notes
Grain requisitioning:
- Bolsheviks had been sending soldiers to the country to find grain
- May 1918: Food-Supplies Dictatorship was established to set up forceful collection of grain as standard policy
Banning of Private Trade
- Private trade and manufacture banned
- State trading organization was chaotic, industry not producing enough condumer goods
- Development of black market
Nationalization of Energy:
- All industry brought under state control- administered by Supreme Council of National Economy Vesenkha
- Workers committees replaced with single managers reporting to central authority: old bourgeois managers called “specialists”. This was done to prevent workers committees that voted for their own pay raises
- Not all workers were against nationalism, some just wanted to keep their jobs
Labor Discipline:
- Fines for absences and tardiness
- Internal passports created to stop people fleeing from countryside
- Piece-work rates brought back
- Bonuses, work book needed for rations
Rationing:
- Class-based system of rationing introduced
- Labor force and red army priority, small rations for civil servants and professionals, smallest to middle class “former people”
Peasants revolted: resulted in forced mobilization of unemployed labor in industries, strikes outlawed, people fled from towns to countryside for more food
Red Terror
Bolsheviks faced increasing opposition in cities because:
- Workers were angry at economic plight, low food rations, state violence. Called for new Soviet elections, free press, formation of Constituent Assembly, wanted to overthrow Sovnakom
- Anarchists who rejected authoritarian control of government
Treaty of Brest Litovsk
- Soviets introduced decree of peace and decree of land, calling for immediate peace negations and abolishing land ownership
- March 3 1918: Ukraine, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland fell under German occupation
- Russia lost resources, population, land, industry
- Left-wing Socialist revolutionaries protesting treaty of Brest-Litovesk, turned to terrorism.
Cheka
Assassination attempt on Lenin resulted in Cheka launching Red Terror on summer 1918- many socialist revolutionaries, anarchists, other left groups arrested. Mensheviks and socialist revolutionaries could not take part in soviets, Kadets were imprisoned or fled to south.
- “dictatorship of the proletariat”: formation of two armed forces to destroy the remnants of the aristocratic and bourgeois power
- “extraordinary commission”: secret police known as the Cheka was formed to fight counter revolutionaries through terror
- Large executions of prisoners in cities
- Cheka promoted class warfare, Bolsheviks wanted to completely wipe out middle class
- Main purpose of terror was to terrify hostile social groups: all guilty of “bourgeois provocation” or counter revolution
- Cheka very active in country-side: used brigades to collect grain from peasants to meet quota, left peasants starving, many took more than food. Some peasants attacked collectors, party officials were murdered. Thousands of peasants arrested, some started hiding grain and stopped planting for next season. Wheat harvests declined.
Execution of Tsar
- Tsar and family/servants shot in July 17 1918
- Lenin claimed it was carried out by local Soviets against his wishes, but evidence suggests otherwise
Constitution
- Degrees in Feb 1918 attacked the Church, separating it from state, banning religious schools
- Second series between April and March nationalized banks, mineral resources, industrial concerns, foreign trade, inheritance of property illegal
- Stae given name of Russian Soviet Federated Soicalist Republic: electoral system based on village and city soviets, centralized power was All-Russian Congress of Soviets. Election by universal suffrage, with some exceptions, such as former Tsarist generals
Life Under War Communism: 1819-1821
- Less than third of urban diet came from state rations, rest from black market
- Urban workers sold made and stolen goods for food
- Chaos in factories due to movement of people: high percentage of workers could be absent at one time
- Middle class viewed as “class enemy”- not allowed to work, although some drafted to work in civil service
- Houses of the rich were taken over and lived in by many small families- run by building committees under control of former servants
- Bourgeois were humiliated
- Corruption in Bolshevik party: local Mafias ran local areas
Kronstadt Rebellion
- 1921
- Naval base: originally source of Bolshevik support, demans for freedom of press, electiosn by secret ballot, release of political prisoners by sailors. Brutally repressed.
- Led to decision of NEP: New Economic Policy. Main features concerned with agriculture. Gov abandoned grain requisitioning from peasants, demanded instead tax paid in food at lower level.
- Although there were over 18 anti-Bolshevik governments in Russia at one point, there were 3 major groups:
1) Reds (Bolsheviks):
- One aim: to stay in power. “Worker’s and Peasant’s Red army formed from Kronstadt, also soldiers from former imperial army.
2) Whites:
Broad, all anti-Bolshevik: liberals, formal tsarists, nationalists, separatists, socialist revolutionaries, moderate socialists. Many divisions because of this. Few wanted Tsar back, but all wanted military dictatorship until Bolsheviks gave up power. Socialist revolutionaries wanted a Constituent Assembly. Held office under provisional government. Joined by Cossacks and Kadets.
3) Greens
Peasant armies, deserters from army. Some for some against Bolsheviks. Concerned with protecting their own area from armies, some were bandits
Civil War
- Began in spring of 1918
- Bolsheviks wanted to run Russia as a one-party state, alienated socialist groups, liberals, conservatives
- Czech legion: formed by Czech and Slovak nationalists to gain independence and war prisoners. Planned to fight Russians, later fought allies when Russia pulled out of the war. Agreed with Bolsheviks to be transported to western front along Trans-Siberian Railway, clashed resulted in Czech’s control of major sections of the railway, joined by white forces.
- 3 major white forces threatened Bolsheviks: Yudenich in West, Kolchak in east, Denikin/Wrangel in South (pg 82)
- Allied tropps sent to Russia to reopen eastern front against Germany, tried to help whites, no effective actions occures
- British sent supplies to Whites
Russo- Polish War (1919-1921)
- Poles tried to seize former territory
- Initially successful: captured Kiev in 1920, but by theis time the Bolsheviks had won civil war.
- Polish invasion resulted in non-Bolshevik support for the party because of the common enemy
- Poles pushed back to Warsaw by Front led by Tukhachevsky
- Lenin hoped Bolshevik success would encourage revolution in Germany, and although Germany was unstable and had set up red soviets, the reds were lacking supplies, support, and were defeated by the Poles.
- Settlement in 1921: Treaty of Riga: Russia surrendered large areas of white Russia and Ukraine to Poles
Trotsky
- Commissar for War in 1918
- Army was in disintegration, restored discipline, returned it to effective military force
- Reorganized army by hierarchical lines, brought back Tsarist officers, held families hostage to ensure loyalty
- Resented by other leading Bolsheviks: Stalin and Zinoviev- had different concept of revolutionary army that was more like a militia than a Tsarist army
- Trotsky got his way with support of Lenin, who believed it was the only solution due to the state of the army and urgency of situation
- To placate party and ensure loyalty from officers, Trotsky placed political commissar to each army unit, to monitor actions of officers to ensure they were politically correct
- Soldier’s committees and elections of officers by soldiers ended, changed ranks and wages, re-establishment of harsh military discipline, returned death penalty
- Formed labor battalions, made up of bourgeois
- Saved Petrograd when under threat from Yudenich
Red Amry
- Made of urban workers and peasants
- Although peasants were willing to fight for their land, they were generally unwilling conscripts: deserted at harvest time, staged uprisings in response to mass conscription by Reds, amny joined green armies
- Rates of desertion were just as high in reds and whites
- When peasants deserted, took uniform and weapons with them, resulting in the red army being poorly equipped
- Because of this, Trotsky’s train carrying uniforms and supplies was important
- Large amount of indiscipline: officers were murdered, anti-Semitism although many of the commissars were Jewish, including Trotsky
White Army
Division:
- Kolchak had many socialist revolutionaries arrested, which resulted in them staging results and undermining his campaign
Lack of Support:
- Southern Volunteer army, led by Denikin was misled: believed they were fighting for old order, but Don Cossaks only wanted independence for their own region
- United against Bolsheviks, but did not share central command and kept separate units
- Denikin did not make concession to national aspirations
- Brutality of white armies antagonized peasants, especially Cossacks in Southern army- ethnic cleansing of peasants
- Peasants deserted white army by thousands, helped by Volunteer army and helped by Denikin. This resulted in peasants opposing whites
- Whites were identified with old Tsarist army, so although they held support from Kadets and Rightests, lost support of workers and peasants
Red Army: Why they won
Geographical factors
- Bolshevik control of central area- Moscow and Petrograd. Moved capital to Moscow, which was center of railway network, and helped to transport materials to army.
- This area contained major factories, enabling them to produce war materials. Much of the old military equipment from the Tsarist army fell into the hands of the Bolsheviks.
- Central area was heavily populated, (much more than white areas): able to conscript large numbers for army.
- Whites were scattered along edges of central area, separated by large distances. Resulted in difficulties communicating and moving weapons.
Unity/Organization
- Bolsheviks had single, unifies command structure
- Trotsky organized army: more effective and disciplined than the whites
- Whites were made of different groups with different beliefs, could not agree what they were fighting for. Split on views of national minorities. This made it hard to decide on a political and military strategy: white generals would not work together because they did not trust each other.
Leadership:
- Trotsky was excellent leader: brave, took his special forces to parts of Front where fighting was hardest. Inspired army.
- Heavy discipline in red army: peasants knew if they retreated they faced the death penalty.
- White leaders were second-rate: cruel to men. Many soldiers deserted.
- Large amount indiscipline and corruption in white army: uniforms and weapons provided by foreign governments sold on black market, officers on drugs/sex.
Support:
- Peasants support was crucial because they made up main body of soldiers for both sides. Peasants wanted to desert from both sides, but Lenin legitimized their right to the land while White’s said land would be restored to its former owner- support of Reds.
- White’s lost support of nationalist groups; wanted to restore Russia with its pre-1917 borders, which antagonized national groups (separatists) like Ukraine and Georgia looking for independence. This resulted in no support from separatists, which occupied the territory the whites were based in.
- Reds had support group of workers and soldiers but did not hold popular support because of war communism and the way the reds handled food supply and cities. However, workers and peasants wanted to protect gains of 1917, and since the whites were associated with the old form of government, saw supporting reds as the best way to do this.
Other factors:
- Although foreign intervention gave whites supplies, it was ineffective. Gave Bolsheviks propaganda coup because they could present themselves as defending Russia against foreign forces.
- Reds used more imaginative and powerful propaganda.
Russian Life in Civil War
- Central authority disappeared, fighting fronts were unstable, military units changed sides between whites and reds
- Cossacks in South raped/murdered villages of Jews in pogroms, claiming Jews supported the Bolsheviks
- In Donbass region, white shot minors that did not produce enough coal
- Typhus spread rapidly, killing over 1 million in 1920
War Communism
- While Trotsky led civil war, Lenin built and consolidated Bolshevik state, including dealing with the economy deterioration in spring 1918
- To ensure survival in first months after October revolution, Bolsheviks gave control of land to peasants and control of factories to worker committees
- There were shortages of raw materials because of civil war
- Industrial output, mainly consumer goods, shrank in Bolshevik central area
- Resulted in inflation, value of rouble collapsed
- Peasants would not supply food to the cities if no goods were provided in return and paper money was worthless
- Rich wheat areas of Ukraine were outside of Bolshevik control
- Food riots in many cities in early 1918
- Workers left cities, factories were short of workers
- Lenin was faced with 2 problems:
Keeping workers in cities to produce war supplies.
Feeding workers.
- Aside from economic problems, Lenin faced other problems: the whole economy of the red-area Russia was focused on was geared towards army
War Communism- reaction of pressures to run the economy to continue the war
- Called “internal front”- extension of class warfare, aim to wipe out bourgeois and counter-revolutionaries
- Happy to see market economy collapse in 1918- believed the only way to communism was through socialism
- Wanted nationalization of industry and state control
- Reluctance to abandon when civil war ended: Trotsky wanted to draft soldiers into factories and fields to work under military discipline
Features of War Communism:
“decree on nationalization”- control of all econonomic production and distribution, outlawed private trade, printing large quantities of bank notes
Grain requisitioning:
- Bolsheviks had been sending soldiers to the country to find grain
- May 1918: Food-Supplies Dictatorship was established to set up forceful collection of grain as standard policy
Banning of Private Trade
- Private trade and manufacture banned
- State trading organization was chaotic, industry not producing enough condumer goods
- Development of black market
Nationalization of Energy:
- All industry brought under state control- administered by Supreme Council of National Economy Vesenkha
- Workers committees replaced with single managers reporting to central authority: old bourgeois managers called “specialists”. This was done to prevent workers committees that voted for their own pay raises
- Not all workers were against nationalism, some just wanted to keep their jobs
Labor Discipline:
- Fines for absences and tardiness
- Internal passports created to stop people fleeing from countryside
- Piece-work rates brought back
- Bonuses, work book needed for rations
Rationing:
- Class-based system of rationing introduced
- Labor force and red army priority, small rations for civil servants and professionals, smallest to middle class “former people”
Peasants revolted: resulted in forced mobilization of unemployed labor in industries, strikes outlawed, people fled from towns to countryside for more food
Red Terror
Bolsheviks faced increasing opposition in cities because:
- Workers were angry at economic plight, low food rations, state violence. Called for new Soviet elections, free press, formation of Constituent Assembly, wanted to overthrow Sovnakom
- Anarchists who rejected authoritarian control of government
Treaty of Brest Litovsk
- Soviets introduced decree of peace and decree of land, calling for immediate peace negations and abolishing land ownership
- March 3 1918: Ukraine, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland fell under German occupation
- Russia lost resources, population, land, industry
- Left-wing Socialist revolutionaries protesting treaty of Brest-Litovesk, turned to terrorism.
Cheka
Assassination attempt on Lenin resulted in Cheka launching Red Terror on summer 1918- many socialist revolutionaries, anarchists, other left groups arrested. Mensheviks and socialist revolutionaries could not take part in soviets, Kadets were imprisoned or fled to south.
- “dictatorship of the proletariat”: formation of two armed forces to destroy the remnants of the aristocratic and bourgeois power
- “extraordinary commission”: secret police known as the Cheka was formed to fight counter revolutionaries through terror
- Large executions of prisoners in cities
- Cheka promoted class warfare, Bolsheviks wanted to completely wipe out middle class
- Main purpose of terror was to terrify hostile social groups: all guilty of “bourgeois provocation” or counter revolution
- Cheka very active in country-side: used brigades to collect grain from peasants to meet quota, left peasants starving, many took more than food. Some peasants attacked collectors, party officials were murdered. Thousands of peasants arrested, some started hiding grain and stopped planting for next season. Wheat harvests declined.
Execution of Tsar
- Tsar and family/servants shot in July 17 1918
- Lenin claimed it was carried out by local Soviets against his wishes, but evidence suggests otherwise
Constitution
- Degrees in Feb 1918 attacked the Church, separating it from state, banning religious schools
- Second series between April and March nationalized banks, mineral resources, industrial concerns, foreign trade, inheritance of property illegal
- Stae given name of Russian Soviet Federated Soicalist Republic: electoral system based on village and city soviets, centralized power was All-Russian Congress of Soviets. Election by universal suffrage, with some exceptions, such as former Tsarist generals
Life Under War Communism: 1819-1821
- Less than third of urban diet came from state rations, rest from black market
- Urban workers sold made and stolen goods for food
- Chaos in factories due to movement of people: high percentage of workers could be absent at one time
- Middle class viewed as “class enemy”- not allowed to work, although some drafted to work in civil service
- Houses of the rich were taken over and lived in by many small families- run by building committees under control of former servants
- Bourgeois were humiliated
- Corruption in Bolshevik party: local Mafias ran local areas
Kronstadt Rebellion
- 1921
- Naval base: originally source of Bolshevik support, demans for freedom of press, electiosn by secret ballot, release of political prisoners by sailors. Brutally repressed.
- Led to decision of NEP: New Economic Policy. Main features concerned with agriculture. Gov abandoned grain requisitioning from peasants, demanded instead tax paid in food at lower level.
by: Greta Hiestand