The Russian Civil War (1917 to 22) began shortly after the Bolshevik Revolution of November 1917. The Bolsheviks (the Reds) immediately found themselves in conflict with various opposition forces who disagreed with Bolshevik policies like abolishing the monarchy, redistributing land to peasants, and withdrawing from the First World War (1914 to 18). The anti-Bolsheviks were by no means united and included reactionaries, monarchists, those on the right or centre of politics, and members of the military (the Whites), militant peasant groups (the Greens), and Anarchists (the Blacks), as well as rival socialist groups and several foreign powers, notably Japan, Britain, France, and the United States. The Bolsheviks, who called themselves the Communist Party from 1918, eventually won the war, but at a tremendous cost to millions of people across the former Russian Empire in terms of unemployment, famine, and loss of life.

Historians do not agree on when the civil war actually started. Some historians point to the violent repression of opposition by the Bolsheviks immediately after the revolution, that is, between November 1917 and May 1918. Others prefer to begin the civil war with the Czechoslovak Legion uprising in May 1918. There is a similar debate as to when the civil war ended, some historians preferring 1920 when foreign intervention in the west ended, others after the Kronstadt rebellion of 1921 was quashed, and still others as late as October 1922, when Japanese forces withdrew from Siberia and the government could finally claim full control over all of its territories. In 1922, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was declared.

The Bolsheviks and their Red Army won the civil war because of their numerically superior armed forces, the larger population the Soviet government could call upon for conscripts and supplies, and the fact that the White armies were obliged to engage only in the peripheries of Russian territory, meaning the Bolshevik government could continue to control a large industrial base and make excellent use of the railways to mobilise troops to where they were most needed. The Bolshevik government kept strict control over its citizens to ensure loyalty throughout the civil war, even if this failed sometimes. There were several major episodes of rebellion, but these were all brutally crushed by the Soviet government. The Bolsheviks were popular for certain policies, too (at least in the early phases of the war), such as redistributing the land of the wealthy to the peasantry, increasing the power of workers, and withdrawing from WWI.

The White armies were far from unified and had access only to poor transport networks. By attacking Russia from various and entirely separate fronts, the Whites were rarely able to make a combined thrust deep into the enemy's territory. The Whites did receive foreign aid and weapons, but they often failed to win over local populations, who suspected the Whites wanted a return to the hated Tsarist regime of anti-democratic and imperialistic government and an impoverished peasantry. This was only true for some Whites; many promoted the idea of a democracy, as long as it was not a communist-dominated one. For many ordinary people, the Whites only represented the wealthy. In addition, the Whites, because of their association with foreign powers, were often regarded as unpatriotic by ordinary Russians, a view Bolshevik propaganda perpetuated.

The Greens – several separate militant groups of the peasantry – were eager not to join the Reds or Whites, since both threatened their land and harvests. However, with limited military strength, the peasantry was often obliged to put up with whoever controlled the region in which they had farms. In the end, the Communist regime exploited the peasantry to feed the nation, even if the approach was so brutal that it removed incentives to farm and led to severe food shortages and then famine. The Communists might have won the war, but they also wrecked Russia and the states of its former empire in the process.

In November 1917, the Bolsheviks, radical socialists led by Vladimir Lenin, installed by force their own government, replacing the moderate Provisional Government, which had ineffectively ruled Russia since the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II in March 1917. The Bolsheviks were popular with the peasantry and working class since they promised socialist reforms, but they were far from convincing the majority of Russians that a soviet state run by the proletariat was the way forward. Royalists still dreamed of returning the tsar or his heir to the throne. Other socialists, such as the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries, did not agree with the Bolshevik vision of a new revolutionary Russia.

The Provisional Government had enjoyed the support of many of the middle classes, upper classes, and the Russian Orthodox Church. The Bolshevik government formally separated the church from the state in February 1918. The church could not own property. Many bishops and priests were arrested. Religious education was forbidden in schools. Many ordinary people of various political persuasions reacted to this attack by attending churches in larger numbers than ever before. Another source of opposition was the various nationalist movements, such as those in the Baltic, Ukraine, and Cossack-dominated regions, who were adamant that they would govern themselves. Finally, there was also the issue of WWI. The Bolsheviks promised to withdraw from the conflict as soon as possible, while other groups wished to continue, if only to avoid the harsh terms of a peace treaty with Germany. Foreign powers like Britain and France wanted Russia, their ally in the conflict, to continue to participate in WWI. France was also keen to recoup Russian debts. Japan, meanwhile, sought to take advantage of the chaos by seizing what it could of Siberia.

The Bolshevik government was fully aware of this varied and powerful opposition and was determined to crush it, even if civil war was an inevitable consequence of this policy. As the historian H. Shukman notes:

It might seem inappropriate to blame the Bolsheviks for the civil war, since after all it was launched by their enemies. Yet it was a Bolshevik slogan to 'turn imperialist war into civil war'. They adopted, quite deliberately, policies which rendered civil war inevitable.

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Having more or less gained control of the key cities across the Russian Empire by March 1918, the Bolshevik government definitively withdrew from WWI. This was achieved with the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany, signed on 3 March. The terms of the treaty were so harsh that some socialists called for a return to the fighting, but the reality was that the German army was advancing virtually unopposed. Indeed, Petrograd (St. Petersburg) was deemed still to be under threat, and so Lenin moved the capital to Moscow on 10 March. Under the terms of the peace treaty, Soviet Russia was obliged to give up Ukraine, eastern Poland, Finland, the Baltic provinces (Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia), Belorussia (Belarus), and other territories to Germany, while the Caucasus went to Turkey. The Russian Empire lost 34 per cent of its population and 32 per cent of its agricultural land (Wood, 51). At least now that its territory was much smaller, the Bolsheviks had a better chance of defending it.

Russia's former allies in WWI were furious at Lenin's capitulation at Brest-Litovsk. Hoping to change the soviet regime and get Russia back into the war, Britain, France, the United States, and others supported the opponents of the Bolsheviks. However, in all of these countries, the populations were exceedingly war-weary after the horrors of WWI, and so Western intervention in the Russian Civil War was limited. The Tsarist generals who began to organise a military opposition to the Bolsheviks became known as the Whites, and they received the support from foreign powers, such as it was. Other forces involved included non-Bolshevik socialists and local nationalists who fought for their own interests. Anarchists, some of whom supported the Reds while others opposed them, were known as the Blacks. The radical peasants known as the Greens complete this chaotic kaleidoscope of shifting alliances, groups that fought each other to control the various pieces of the shattered Russian Empire.

In order to better face its internal and external threats, the Bolshevik government adopted a policy known as War Communism. This was imposed from the summer of 1918 and involved such unpopular policies as conscription and the requisitioning of grain. Other draconian measures included extending the working day to 11 hours, making labour compulsory for every able-bodied male between the ages of 16 and 50, and punishments for those workers considered to be slacking. As a consequence, there was a mass migration from the cities to the countryside, where the tentacles of the Bolshevik government had a more tentative grip on daily life.

In the countryside, peasants sold their grain on the black market or simply hid their harvest from the authorities. Peasant unrest broke out, particularly in Ukraine and the Tambov province. The Bolsheviks faced a similar crisis in the cities, where workers went on strike to protest the rampant inflation that reduced the real value of wages to one-third of their pre-war level. There was a serious shortage of food supplies, and so food had to be rationed. The economy was in freefall, with a drastic reduction in industrial productivity and a chronic shortage of fuel and raw materials. Unemployment reached new heights because war industries closed down following Russia's withdrawal from WWI.

The Bolsheviks lost control of all the Russian naval fleets except the Baltic Fleet, which became part of what was known as the Red Navy. In reality, the Bolsheviks' opponents did not utilise naval power in any great strength. Most of the fighting in this civil war would be conducted on land and would be heavily dependent on railway connections. The Red Army, commanded by Leon Trotsky, grew in strength as the conflict progressed, numbering around 500,000 soldiers in 1918, 3 million in 1919, and 5 million (including 60,000 women) by June 1920, all tightly controlled by 180,000 party commissars and the Cheka, the Bolsheviks' secret police. The Red Army benefitted from the excellent use of the railway network by the government, which allowed forces to be dispatched to where they were most needed. The enemies of the Bolsheviks, on the other hand, had only limited railway networks available on the periphery of the Russian heartland.

The Czech Corps consisted of 40,000 men, mostly prisoners of war from Austria-Hungary. After the peace of Brest-Litovsk, this corps was making its way to the Western Front, but then turned against the Bolshevik regime and won vast swathes of territory along the River Volga. In September, the Red Army was better organised on this front, and, boosted by the addition of Latvian riflemen, it regained some lost territory. Meanwhile, Allied forces made their first attacks in the war, landing at Murmansk, Vladivostok, Archangel, and Baku. Also in 1918, anti-Bolshevik Cossacks, who were well-trained horse riders, made inroads through Ukraine, and a battle was fought for control of Tsaritsyn (later called Stalingrad and today's Volgograd). The Reds, there commanded by one Joseph Stalin, kept hold of the city largely thanks to their superior numbers and despite the Cossacks being armed by Germany.

In July 1918, the anti-Bolshevik royalists suffered a great blow to their hopes. A Czech force had then approached Ekaterinaburg (Yekaterinburg), where the ex-tsar was being held prisoner; Lenin ordered the execution of Nicholas and his entire family. The murder of the Romanovs was perhaps the most infamous episode of the civil war. The same year, there was a failed assassination attempt on Lenin, and the government promptly used this to create a hysteria of terror. The secret police arrested anyone suspected of being against Bolshevism or the war (including rival socialist factions and striking workers). This wave of brutal state repression was called the 'Red Terror'. There was, too, a 'White Terror', less systematic than its Red counterpart but nevertheless involving atrocities and massacres, particularly of those considered communists or Jewish.

None of the peripheral attacks in 1918, a period often described as a 'counter-revolution', seriously threatened Russia's heartland. In short, the Bolshevik government still controlled a massive area of territory and could call on conscripts from a population of 60 million people. With half a million personnel in the Red Army, the Bolsheviks held a numerical advantage over their enemies, which would only grow in time.

Germany and Austria-Hungary lost WWI by November 1918, and the Red Army, often combined with locally-recruited partisans, took the opportunity to go on the offensive, notably in the Baltic states, Belorussia, and Ukraine. In 1919, the anti-Communist armies included troops from the Allies, Germany, Poland, Scandinavia and other states and former provinces of Tsarist Russia. The principal commanders of the Whites were General Lavr Kornilov, the former Supreme Commander of the Russian Army, General Anton Denikin in the south, and Admiral Aleksandr Kolchak in the east.

Fighting was bitter and indecisive in Crimea, but elsewhere the Red Army won a string of victories. A French attack on Odessa through the spring of 1919 was a failure. White forces in the Baltic and Belorussia made some gains. Several major cities changed sides several times. In the Urals, the Red Army swept back the Whites and deprived them of their industrial base. In the cold north, a small British force proved totally inadequate to the task of acquiring and then holding Murmansk and Archangel. The British force withdrew in the autumn of 1919, and by the spring of 1920, the Red Army had removed the White Army from the region. By the end of 1919, the White threat in the Baltic had been removed, too. Henceforth, Finland and the Baltic states adopted a neutral stance to the conflict. In the west, Russia found itself in a bitter war with Poland, a conflict which ended with an armistice in October 1920, where Poland received parts of Ukraine and Belorussia.

The government suffered its greatest defeat in the Caucasus, despite enjoying a numerical advantage. The region which proved most difficult for the Bolshevik government to subdue was in the south, particularly the Cossack forces in Ukraine. The Whites, benefitting from British tanks and the logistical difficulties of the Red Army's stretched supply lines, gained control of the key city of Kharkov (Kharkiv), and then Kursk. Attacking Moscow became a real possibility. As so often before and after, though, the vast scale of Russia's geography was the downfall of the advancing army. As the White's supply lines became overstretched the deeper into Russia they advanced, so the Red Army could counterattack and outflank the enemy. Another weakness of the White Army was its failure to win over the local population or establish effective local government. In the last month of 1919, the White Army was obliged to retreat, and the Cossacks' heartland was lost. Meanwhile, the Allies failed to put sufficient troops on the ground to help the White cause. Most Allied intervention came in the form of arms supplies, and when the Western powers did intervene militarily, it was in small-scale and poorly planned operations that brought little result beyond providing the Bolsheviks with a propaganda coup that they were the ones fighting for Mother Russia's independence. The Whites abandoned Siberia in the autumn of 1920; Crimea was evacuated in November. The last 'White' territory to be lost was in the Far East following Japan's withdrawal from the war in the final months of 1922. The Red Army could claim total victory in the war by the end of 1922.

Around 800,000 soldiers died in the Russian Civil War, but at least 5 million civilians were also killed. Considering the victims of the famine and the fearful wave of deadly epidemics in this period (cholera, typhus, typhoid, and Spanish influenza), some historians would put the total deaths during the civil war as high as 14 million people. In terms of the economic impact, the civil war had a dramatically negative effect upon the general standard of living and both the country's infrastructure and industrial output, the latter sinking to two-thirds below pre-WWI levels.

To try and revive the desperately ailing economy, Lenin compromised on his ideology and instigated a new economic approach. Lenin's New Economic Policy involved a measure of private enterprise. There was an economic recovery, but to compensate for the reinstatement of certain aspects of capitalism, the Communist Party became all-powerful, biding its time until further steps like farm collectivisation and a fully planned economy could be implemented. Harsh and militarised state intervention in people's daily lives had become the norm during the civil war, and despite rebellions against the waves of terror perpetrated by the secret police, this policy would become a constant feature of the Communist Party's iron grip on power.

In the longer term, the Russian Civil War created a lasting suspicion between the Soviet government and Western powers. The material and financial support given to the anti-Bolshevik groups and the consequent propaganda of such foreign intervention shaped the minds of politicians and people alike. This mutual distrust would have consequences prior to the Second World War (1939 to 45) when the USSR felt compelled to form the Nazi-Soviet Pact with Germany, and it would dominate world politics in the decades after WWII with the development of the Cold War between the USSR and the United States and their respective allies.