• Lenin viewed civil war as necessary to build Bolshevik power/Pipes

• Bolsheviks opposed by wide variety of adversaries - ‘White’ forces - liberals, SRs, peasant ‘greens’, anarchists and interventionists (Japan, U.S. Britain and France)

• Generals Alekseev and Kornilov create army in Don region, supported for a time by the Cossacks

three fronts - southern, eastern and northwestern

Civil War - 1917-1920

• first phase - from 1917 to Armistice - western Russia, involved Czechs and Latvians

• second phase - decisive; March - November 1919 Red Army defeats White forces led by Admiral Kolchack and other White commanders

• last phase - Crimean campaign; southern White army evacuated to Constantinople - marks end of war

‘Whites’ - fighting for a ‘Constituent Assembly’, not a restoration of Tsar

• war lacked any conventional plan of operation - few fixed fronts, forces moving constantly across regions

• Whites lost the Civil War because they were “outnumbered and “outgunned”/Pipes

• also, the Reds were unified - one command, operating from the center of Russia with a large population; ‘Whites’ attacking from the periphery

Reds had army of nearly 3 million; Whites - 250,000

• ideology also contributed to Bolshevik success - appealed to many peasants and workers

• Whites represented property and privilege; failed to articulate a program for the masses

• Bolsheviks promised to recognize principle of self-determination for national minorities, within framework of Russian socialist state

poor leadership of White forces - Kolchack, Iudenich, and Wrangel - also a factor in defeat/Orlansky

• Lenin ordered the creation of a new army of 3 million in October 1918 - decision to use former Tsarist officers; Ex-Tsarist officers would comprise 85% of commanders at front

• Leon Trotsky - Commissar of War - modest role in war?/Pipes claims Trotsky had little sense of strategy

• Trotsky’s contribution - political oversight, propagandist - spellbinding speaker - and enforcer

• serious morale problems led to mass desertions -Trotsky adopted draconian measures - executions

Red Army

• interventionist forces had little impact on outcome of war, but their action supported Bolshevik claim of ‘imperialist aggression’

• Lloyd George reluctant to give full support to Whites - Bolsheviks viewed as less of a threat than a reunited national Russia

• Churchill, however, strong supporter of intervention • French intervention motivated by desire to prevent

Russo/German rapprochement - short involvementU.S. - prevent Japanese from seizing parts of

Siberia - no combat