The Russian Civil War, 1918–1921: Causes, Events and Consequences (AQA A Level History: Component 1: Breadth study): Revision Note

Summary

• The Russian Civil War (1918-1921) set the Bolshevik Reds against a loose coalition of the Whites

• Opposition grew after the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, Bolshevik one-party rule and the closure of the Constituent Assembly

  • The Czech Legion revolt in May 1918 helped turn opposition into a full civil war

• Foreign powers, including Britain, France and the USA, supported the Whites

  • Their help was limited and unpopular

• The Reds won by 1921 through their central position, unified command under Trotsky, and benefited from White disunity

• Victory came at a cost

  • Around 10 million died

  • The war strengthened centralisation, terror and one-party rule

• Historians debate whether the Civil War forged the Bolshevik state or mainly left Russia ruined

  • Figes argues that the totalitarian state had its origins in the Civil War

  • Pares stresses that by 1921, Russia was ruined, with industry and transport almost broken down

Causes of the Russian Civil War

Why opposition turned into a civil war

• The Bolsheviks quickly created enemies after taking power in October 1917

  • They banned the opposition press

  • They shut out every other party except a few left-wing Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs)

  • They ruled through the Sovnarkom alone

• Many opponents saw Bolshevik rule as a betrayal of the revolution

  • Urban workers had wanted the Soviet government, not one-party Bolshevik rule

  • The forced closure of the Constituent Assembly after one day in January 1918 enraged moderates

• The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk became the major trigger

  • Many people welcomed the end of Russia's involvement in the First World War

  • However, Russia had to give up a large proportion of its land to Germany

    • This included around one-sixth of its population, around 62 million people

  • The treaty became a symbol of national humiliation and caused deep anger

• Foreign powers wanted to stop Bolshevism from spreading

  • France, Britain, the USA and Japan all opposed Bolshevism

  • More importantly, they wanted Russia to reopen the Eastern Front

    • Germany now directed its fighting towards the Western Front

• The Whites opposed the Bolsheviks, but they were a loose coalition, not a united movement

  • They included:

    • Anarchists, who opposed government altogether

    • Nationalists, who wanted independence from Russian rule

    • The SRs and Mensheviks, who wanted more democracy

    • Senior army officers, who wanted to restore tsarism

  • Their only shared aim was to bring down the Bolsheviks

The Czech Legion and the civil war

• The Czech Legion was a foreign army trying to leave Russia

  • It was a 45,000-strong force of Czech and Slovak troops

  • They had been fighting Germany and Austria-Hungary in the war

  • They wanted to leave Russia and rejoin the fight against Germany

• In March 1918, the Bolsheviks allowed the Legion to move east along the Trans-Siberian Railway

  • A clash in May 1918 turned the Legion against the Bolsheviks

  • Bolshevik officials tried to arrest some of the soldiers

  • Fighting broke out as the force moved along the railway

• The revolt turned scattered opposition into a full civil war

  • The Legion seized the railway across much of the country

  • It joined forces with the anti-Bolshevik groups

  • Together, they began to advance on Moscow

  • Three years of fighting followed across the former empire

Events of the Russian Civil War: Reds vs Whites

How the war was fought

• The Reds held the centre while the Whites attacked from the edges

  • Red territory was based around Moscow and Petrograd

  • White forces pressed in from the east, south and northwest

• The Whites fought on several separate fronts

  • Admiral Kolchak led the White forces in the east, in Siberia

  • General Denikin commanded the White Army in the south

  • General Yudenich attacked towards Petrograd from the northwest

• Foreign powers backed the Whites, but only to a limited extent

  • Britain, France and the USA all sent support

  • They opposed communism and wanted Russia back in the war, fighting against Germany

  • They also resented the Bolshevik refusal to repay tsarist debts

  • Their support declined further after the First World War ended

The early fighting, 1918

• Anti-Bolshevik forces took shape early in 1918

  • General Kornilov led the anti-Bolshevik Volunteer Army in the south

  • Socialist Revolutionaries and liberals set up a rival government at Omsk

  • By summer, the fighting had grown into a full-scale civil war

• The Bolsheviks moved to secure their position

  • They shifted the capital from Petrograd to Moscow in March 1918

  • The Tsar and his family were shot at Yekaterinburg in July 1918

    • Local officials feared the Whites would rescue him as a figurehead

    • They feared he could be restored to the throne

• Trotsky built the Red Army into a fighting force

  • He reintroduced conscription to raise its numbers quickly

    • This gave him an army of around 300,000 men

  • He enforced strict discipline

    • The death penalty was used for desertion or disloyalty

  • He appointed political commissars to keep units loyal

The Reds gain the upper hand, 1919-1920

• The Whites reached the height of their success by June 1919

  • They had seized a large amount of territory

  • However, they still fought as separate forces

• The Reds turned the tide before the end of 1919

  • They used their central position to fight the White armies one at a time

  • Kolchak pushed west from Siberia but was driven back

  • Denikin attacked from the south and threatened Moscow

    • His advance was halted and he was forced into retreat

  • Yudenich struck at Petrograd from the northwest but was pushed back

The final stage and the cost, 1920-1921

• The last White resistance was crushed in 1920

  • General Wrangel took over from Denikin in the south

  • His forces were defeated in the Crimea in 1920

  • Nationalist uprisings, including those in Ukraine, were put down

• The war also ended as a struggle against Poland

  • Polish forces invaded western Ukraine and reached Kiev (Kyiv) in May 1920

  • Marshal Tukhachevsky led a Red counter-offensive on Lenin's orders

  • The Poles fought back and defeated the Red Army

• The Treaty of Riga ended the Polish war in March 1921

  • Poland gained self-rule plus Galicia and parts of Belorussia (Belarus)

  • The independence of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were confirmed

  • Lenin's order to drive into Poland divided the Bolsheviks

• The Reds had won the Civil War by 1921

  • Victory came at a terrible cost

  • Around 10 million people died from hunger, disease and combat

Why did the Reds win?

Weaknesses of the Whites

• The Whites never fought as one united force

  • Their generals operated independently

  • They were scattered across the less-developed edges of the country

  • Their separate advances could be defeated one at a time

• The Whites had no shared goal beyond beating the Bolsheviks

  • Hatred of Bolshevism was not enough to hold them together

  • They could not agree on what Russia should become afterwards

• The Whites struggled to win popular support

  • They were tied to unpopular tsarist-era policies

  • A lack of discipline within the White armies was common

Strengths of the Reds

• The Reds controlled the heartland and its resources

  • They held Moscow and Petrograd, the main industrial centres

    • This gave them factories, supplies and manpower

  • They controlled the main communications and railway hubs

    • This let them move troops and equipment between fronts

• Trotsky gave the Red Army strong, unified leadership

  • He built it into a single, disciplined fighting force

  • One command structure made the Reds better organised than the Whites

  • Trotsky personally visited the front lines and gave speeches to motivate the troops

• Red policy won more support than the White cause

  • Red land policies to redistribute land to the peasants were generally more appealing than what the Whites offered

  • Hostility to foreign intervention worked in the Reds' favour

Political Impacts of the Russian Civil War

The war forced power to the centre

• The Civil War pushed the Bolsheviks towards tight central control

  • Survival demanded fast decisions and strict obedience

  • Terror was used systematically to crush opposition

  • Weak Bolshevik control pushed the regime towards a more centralised system

• Real power shifted to the Party rather than the soviets

  • The Politburo, set up in 1919, became the true centre of power

  • Its first members included Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin

  • The Sovnarkom and the soviets met and mattered less

A militarised, swollen state

• Government grew into a vast bureaucracy during the war

  • There were twice as many officials as workers in Soviet Russia

  • These officials became the main social base of the new regime

• The Party took on a permanent military style

  • It spoke in terms of front, battles and campaigns

  • It treated all opponents as enemies to be hunted down

  • This habit of command and struggle outlasted the war

Tighter rule over the people and minorities

• The state moved away from earlier promises after the war

  • Self-determination for national minorities was dropped

  • Independence movements were branded as counter-revolutionary

  • Georgia's demands for independence were crushed in 1922

• Bolshevik authority was rebuilt as one centralised union

  • The RSFSR became the USSR in December 1922

    • In theory, it was a federation of equal republics

    • In practice, Moscow kept firm control over them all

How Important Was the Russian Civil War to the Success of Bolshevism?

• The Civil War secured Bolshevik power

  • But historians disagree about how far it explains the regime that followed

The Civil War forged the Bolshevik state

• The war turned a fragile takeover into a hardened regime

  • Victory gave the Bolsheviks a powerful founding myth

  • It proved the Party could survive against the odds

  • It removed rival parties and armed opponents

• The war built the tools the regime would continue using

  • The Red Army became a mass, disciplined force

  • Terror and central planning became normal in these years

  • The militarised command style outlasted the fighting

• The state that emerged was shaped by the war for decades

  • Bureaucracy ballooned to 5.4 million officials by 1920

  • The habits of struggle and command became permanent

Key historian

• Figes argues that the Civil War, not 1917 alone, created the centralised and bureaucratic state of Soviet rule

  • This supports the view that the war was decisive in shaping what Bolshevism became

The war's importance lay in its cost, not its strength

• Bolshevik victory owed much to White failure

  • The Whites were divided and scattered from the start

  • The Reds simply held the centre and outlasted them

  • This was survival as much as positive achievement

• The human and economic cost was huge

  • Around 10 million people died across the conflict

  • Industry was reduced to a fraction of its former size

  • The country was left exhausted and close to collapse

• The damage created crises the regime could not ignore

  • War Communism triggered famine and bitter unrest

  • These pressures forced the retreat to the New Economic Policy (opens in a new tab)

  • The cost of victory shaped the hard choices that followed

Key historian

• Pares stresses the scale of devastation by 1921

  • Industry and transport were almost destroyed

  • This supports the view that the war’s true importance lay in the ruin it left behind, not in any positive strength it gave the Bolsheviks