White Guards in the Civil War. White movement in the civil war. Famous Red leaders
"Reds"
Leaders of the Reds. short biography
Lev Davidovich Trotsky.
Lev Davidovich Trotsky (real name Bronstein) (1879-1940) - Russian and international political figure, publicist, thinker.
In 1917-18 Leon Trotsky People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs; in 1918-25, People's Commissar for Military Affairs, Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic; one of the founders of the Red Army, personally led its actions on many fronts of the Civil War, and made extensive use of repression. Member of the Central Committee in 1917-27, member of the Politburo of the Central Committee in October 1917 and in 1919-26.
Revolution 1905-1907
Having learned about the beginning of the revolution in Russia, Leon Trotsky returned to his homeland illegally. He spoke in the press, taking radical positions. In October 1905 he became deputy chairman, then chairman of the St. Petersburg Council of Workers' Deputies. In December, he was arrested along with the council.
In prison, Leon Trotsky created the work “Results and Prospects,” where the theory of “permanent” revolution was formulated. Trotsky proceeded from the uniqueness of the historical path of Russia, where tsarism should be replaced not by bourgeois democracy, as the liberals and Mensheviks believed, and not by the revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry, as the Bolsheviks believed, but by the power of the workers, which was supposed to impose its will on the entire population of the country and rely on the world revolution.
In 1907, Trotsky was sentenced to eternal settlement in Siberia with deprivation of all civil rights, but on the way to his place of exile he fled again.
Second emigration
From 1908 to 1912, Leon Trotsky published the newspaper Pravda in Vienna (this name was later borrowed by Lenin), and in 1912 he tried to create an “August bloc” of Social Democrats. This period included his most acute clashes with Lenin, who called Trotsky “Judas”.
In 1912, Trotsky was a war correspondent for “Kyiv Thought” in the Balkans, and after the outbreak of World War I, in France (this work gave him military experience that was later useful). Having taken a sharply anti-war position, he attacked the governments of all the warring powers with all the might of his political temperament. In 1916 he was expelled from France and sailed to the USA, where he continued to appear in print.
Return to revolutionary Russia
Having learned about the February Revolution, Leon Trotsky headed home. In May 1917 he arrived in Russia and took a position of sharp criticism of the Provisional Government. In July, he joined the Bolshevik Party as a member of the Mezhrayontsy. He showed his talent as an orator in all its brilliance in factories, educational institutions, theaters, squares, and circuses; as usual, he acted prolificly as a publicist. After the July days he was arrested and ended up in prison.
In September, after his liberation, professing radical views and presenting them in a populist form, Leon Trotsky became the idol of the Baltic sailors and soldiers of the city garrison and was elected chairman of the Petrograd Soviet. In addition, he became chairman of the military revolutionary committee created by the council. He was the de facto leader of the October armed uprising.
In the spring of 1918, Leon Trotsky was appointed to the post of People's Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs and chairman of the revolutionary military council of the republic. In this post he showed himself to be a highly talented and energetic organizer. To create a combat-ready army, he took decisive and cruel measures: taking hostages, executions and imprisonment in prisons and concentration camps of opponents, deserters and violators of military discipline, and no exception was made for the Bolsheviks.
L. Trotsky did a great job of recruiting former tsarist officers and generals (“military experts”) into the Red Army and defended them from attacks by some high-ranking communists. During the Civil War, his train ran on railroads on all fronts; The People's Commissar for Military Affairs supervised the actions of the fronts, made fiery speeches to the troops, punished the guilty, and rewarded those who distinguished themselves.
In general, during this period there was close cooperation between Leon Trotsky and Vladimir Lenin, although on a number of issues of a political (for example, discussion about trade unions) and military-strategic (the fight against the troops of General Denikin, the defense of Petrograd from the troops of General Yudenich and the war with Poland) nature there were serious disagreements between them.
At the end of the Civil War and the beginning of the 1920s. Trotsky's popularity and influence reached their apogee, and a cult of his personality began to take shape.
In 1920-21, Leon Trotsky was one of the first to propose measures to curtail “war communism” and transition to the NEP.
General Alexey Alekseevich Brusilov
In 1881-- 1906 served in the officer cavalry school, where he successively held positions from riding instructor to head of the school. In 1906--1912. commanded various military units. At the beginning of the First World War, he was appointed commander of the 8th Army, in March 1916 he took the post of commander-in-chief of the Southwestern Front and became one of the best commanders.
The offensive of the troops of the Southwestern Front in 1916, which brought the Russian army the greatest success in the war, went down in history as the Brusilov breakthrough, but this brilliant maneuver did not receive strategic development. After the February Revolution of 1917, Brusilov, as a supporter of continuing the war to a victorious end, was appointed Supreme Commander-in-Chief, but due to the failure of the June offensive and the order to suppress calls for non-execution of military orders, he was replaced by L. G. Kornilov.
In August 1917, when Kornilov moved part of his troops to Petrograd with the aim of introducing a military dictatorship, Brusilov refused to support him. During the fighting in Moscow, Brusilov was wounded in the leg by a shell fragment and was ill for a long time.
Despite his arrest by the Cheka in 1918, he refused to join the White movement and from 1920 began serving in the Red Army. He headed a Special Meeting under the Commander-in-Chief of all the armed forces of the RSFSR, which developed recommendations for strengthening the Red Army. From 1921 he was chairman of the commission for organizing pre-conscription cavalry training, and from 1923 he was attached to the Revolutionary Military Council to carry out particularly important assignments.
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (Ulyanov)
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (Ulyanov) (1870 - 1924) - politician, revolutionary, founder of the Bolshevik Party, the Soviet state, chairman of the Council of People's Commissars.
In 1895, he met the “Emancipation of Labor” group abroad, which had a huge influence on him and accelerated his entry into the struggle for the creation in the same year of the St. Petersburg “Union of Struggle for the Liberation of the Working Class.” For the organization and activities of this Union, he was arrested, spent one year and two months in prison, and exiled for three years to the village of Shushenskoye, Minusinsk district, Krasnoyarsk Territory. Returning from exile in February 1900, Lenin organized the publication of the newspaper Iskra, which played a huge role in the creation of the RSDLP in 1903. At its second congress, the majority of delegates, led by Lenin, stood for a more revolutionary and clear definition of who should be a member of the party, for a more business-like organization of the party's leading bodies. From here came the division into Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. At first, Lenin was supported by Plekhanov, but under the influence of the Mensheviks he moved away from the Bolsheviks. Lenin took an active part in the first Russian revolution. Speaking under false names (conspiracy), he shattered the revolutionary and reformist illusions of the Cadets, Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, their hopes for a peaceful outcome of the revolutionary movement. He sharply criticized the so-called Bulygin (deliberative) Duma and gave a slogan for its boycott. He pointed out the need to prepare an armed uprising and actively supported representatives of Social Democracy from the State Duma. He pointed out the need to use all legal opportunities when it was impossible to hope for a direct revolutionary struggle.
The First World War mixed up all the cards. At the beginning of the war, V.I. Lenin was arrested by the Austrian authorities, but thanks to the efforts of the Austrian Social Democrats, he was released and left for Switzerland. Among the explosion of patriotism that gripped all political parties, he was practically the only one who called for the transformation of the imperialist war into a civil war - in each country against its own government. In these debates he felt a complete lack of understanding.
After the February 1917 revolution, Lenin returned to Russia. On the evening of April 2, 1917, at the Finlyandsky Station in Petrograd, he was given a solemn meeting by the working masses. Vladimir Ilyich made a short speech to those greeting them from the armored car, in which he called for a socialist revolution.
The period from February to October 1917 was one of the most intense periods of Lenin’s political struggle with the Cadets, Socialist Revolutionaries, and Mensheviks during the transition period from the bourgeois-democratic revolution to the socialist revolution. These were legal and illegal ways, forms and methods of political struggle. After three political crises of the bourgeois Provisional Government of Russia (April, June, July 1917), the suppression of the counter-revolutionary rebellion of General Kornilov (August 1917), and a wide period of “Bolshevisation” of the Soviets (September 1917), Lenin came to the conclusion: the growing influence of the Bolsheviks and the fall in the authority of the Provisional Government among the broad masses of working people makes it possible to revolt with the aim of transferring political power into the hands of the people.
The uprising took place on October 25, 1917, old style. On this evening, at the first meeting of the Second Congress of Soviets, Lenin made a proclamation of Soviet power and its first two decrees: the end of the war and the transfer of all landowners' territory and privately owned land for the free use of the working people. The dictatorship of the bourgeoisie was replaced by the dictatorship of the proletariat.
On Lenin's initiative and with strong opposition from a significant part of the Bolshevik Central Committee, the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty with Germany was concluded in 1918, which was rightly called “shameful.” Lenin saw that the Russian peasantry would not go to war; He believed, moreover, that the revolution in Germany was approaching at a rapid pace and that the most shameful conditions of the world would remain on paper. And so it happened: the bourgeois revolution that broke out in Germany annulled the painful conditions of the Brest-Litovsk Peace.
Lenin stood at the origins of the creation of the Red Army, which defeated the combined forces of internal and external counter-revolution in the civil war. Based on his recommendations, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was created. With the end of the civil war and the cessation of military intervention, the country's national economy began to improve. Lenin understood the iron necessity of changing the political line of the Bolsheviks. For this purpose, at his insistence, “war communism” was abolished, food allocation was replaced by a food tax. He introduced the so-called New Economic Policy (NEP), which allowed private free trade, which made it possible for large sections of the population to independently seek the means of subsistence that the state could not yet give them. At the same time, he insisted on the development of state-owned enterprises, electrification, and the development of cooperation. Lenin pointed out that in anticipation of the world proletarian revolution, keeping all large industry in the hands of the state, it is necessary to gradually build socialism in one country. All this can help put the backward Soviet country on the same level as the most developed European countries.
But Lenin’s colossal work overload began to affect his health. The attempt on his life by the Socialist-Revolutionary Kaplan also seriously undermined his health.
January 21, 1924 V.I. Lenin died. The body rests in the Mausoleum on Red Square in Moscow.
"Red Movement"
The Red Movement relied on the support of the bulk of the working class and the poorest peasantry. The social basis of the white movement was the officers, bureaucrats, nobility, bourgeoisie, and individual representatives of workers and peasants. The party that expressed the position of the Reds were the Bolsheviks. The party composition of the white movement is heterogeneous: Black Hundred-monarchist, liberal, socialist parties. The program goals of the red movement: the preservation and establishment of Soviet power throughout Russia, the suppression of anti-Soviet forces, the strengthening of the dictatorship of the proletariat as a condition for building a socialist society.
The Bolsheviks won a military-political victory: the resistance of the White Army was suppressed, Soviet power was established throughout the country, including in most national regions, conditions were created for strengthening the dictatorship of the proletariat and the implementation of socialist transformations. The price of this victory was huge human losses (more than 15 million people killed, died of hunger and disease), mass emigration (more than 2.5 million people), economic devastation, the tragedy of entire social groups (officers, Cossacks, intelligentsia, nobility, clergy and etc.), society’s addiction to violence and terror, the rupture of historical and spiritual traditions, the split into reds and whites.
"Green movement"
The “green” movement is the third force in the Civil War. In Russia there were many opponents, both white and red. These were participants in the rebel, so-called “green” movement.
The largest manifestation of the “green” movement was the work of the anarchist Nestor Makhno (1888-1934). The movement headed by Makhno (the total number is variable - from 500 to 35,000 people) came out under the slogans of a “powerless state”, “free councils”, and waged an armed struggle against everyone - the German interventionists, Petliura, Denikin, Wrangel, Soviet power. Makhno dreamed of creating an independent state in steppe Ukraine with its capital in the village of Gulyai-Polye (now Gulyai-Polye, Zaporozhye region). Initially, Makhno collaborated with the Reds and helped defeat Wrangel’s army. Then his movement was liquidated by the Red Army. Makhno and a group of surviving associates managed to escape abroad in 1921 and died in France.
Peasant uprisings covered areas of Tambov, Bryansk, Samara, Simbirsk, Yaroslavl, Smolensk, Kostroma, Vyatka, Novgorod, Penza and Tver provinces. In 1919-1922 In the area of the village of Ankuvo, Ivanovo Territory, the so-called “Ankovo gang” operated - a detachment of “greens” led by E. Skorodumov (Yushku) and V. Stulov. The detachment consisted of peasant deserters who evaded conscription into the Red Army. The “Ankovskaya gang” destroyed food detachments, raided the city of Yuryev-Polsky, and robbed the treasury. The gang was defeated by regular units of the Red Army.
Assessment by domestic and foreign historians of the causes of the civil war
The outstanding philosopher of the 20th century, Nobel laureate Bertrand Russell (who was sober and critical of the Bolsheviks), having spent five weeks in 1920 at the height of the civil war in Russia, described and comprehended what he had to see: “The main thing that the Bolsheviks succeeded , is to ignite hope... Even under existing conditions in Russia one can still feel the influence of the life-giving spirit of communism, the spirit of creative hope, the search for means to destroy injustice, tyranny, greed, everything that hinders the growth of the human spirit, the desire to replace personal competition with joint action , the relationship between master and slave is free cooperation.”
“The spirit of creative hope” (B. Russell) helped the fighting workers and peasants, despite incredible hardships (including due to the regime of “war communism”), hunger, cold, epidemics, they found the strength to withstand the trials of those harsh years and victoriously end the civil war.
Anton Denikin
Anton Ivanovich Denikin was one of the main leaders of the White movement during the Civil War, its leader in the south of Russia. He achieved the greatest military and political results among all the leaders of the White movement. One of the main organizers, and then commander of the Volunteer Army. Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the South of Russia, Deputy Supreme Ruler and Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Army, Admiral Kolchak.
After the death of Kolchak, all-Russian power was supposed to pass to Denikin, but on April 4, 1920, he transferred command to General Wrangel and on the same day he left with his family for Europe. Denikin lived in England, Belgium, Hungary, and France, where he was engaged in literary activities. While remaining a staunch opponent of the Soviet system, he nevertheless refused German offers of cooperation. Soviet influence in Europe forced Denikin to move to the United States in 1945, where he continued to work on the autobiographical story “The Path of a Russian Officer,” but never finished it. General Anton Ivanovich Denikin died of a heart attack on August 8, 1947 at the University of Michigan Hospital in Ann Arbor and was buried in a cemetery in Detroit. In 2005, the ashes of General Denikin and his wife were transported to Moscow for burial in the Holy Don Monastery.
Alexander Kolchak
The leader of the White movement during the Civil War, Supreme Ruler of Russia Alexander Kolchak was born on November 16, 1874 in St. Petersburg. In November 1919, under the pressure of the Red Army, Kolchak left Omsk. In December, Kolchak’s train was blocked in Nizhneudinsk by the Czechoslovaks. On January 4, 1920, he transferred the entirety of the already mythical power to Denikin, and the command of the armed forces in the east to Semyonov. Kolchak's safety was guaranteed by the allied command. But after the transfer of power in Irkutsk to the Bolshevik Revolutionary Committee, Kolchak was also at his disposal. Upon learning of Kolchak's capture, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin gave orders to shoot him. Alexander Kolchak was shot along with the Chairman of the Council of Ministers Pepelyaev on the banks of the Ushakovka River. The corpses of those shot were lowered into an ice hole on the Angara.
Lavr Kornilov
Lavr Kornilov - Russian military leader, participant in the Civil War, one of the organizers and Commander-in-Chief of the Volunteer Army, leader of the White movement in the South of Russia.
On April 13, 1918, he was killed during the assault on Yekaterinodar by an enemy grenade. The coffin with Kornilov's body was secretly buried during the retreat through the German colony of Gnachbau. The grave was razed to the ground. Later, organized excavations discovered only the coffin with the body of Colonel Nezhentsev. In Kornilov’s dug up grave, only a piece of a pine coffin was found.
Peter Krasnov
Pyotr Nikolaevich Krasnov - general of the Russian Imperial Army, ataman of the All-Great Don Army, military and political figure, writer and publicist. During World War II, he served as head of the Main Directorate of Cossack Troops of the Imperial Ministry of Eastern Occupied Territories. In June 1917, he was appointed head of the 1st Kuban Cossack Division, in September - commander of the 3rd Cavalry Corps, promoted to lieutenant general. He was arrested during the Kornilov speech upon arrival in Pskov by the commissar of the Northern Front, but was then released. On May 16, 1918, Krasnov was elected ataman of the Don Cossacks. Having relied on Germany, relying on its support and not obeying A.I. To Denikin, who was still focused on the “allies,” he launched a fight against the Bolsheviks at the head of the Don Army.
The Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR announced the decision to execute Krasnov P.N., Krasnov S.N., Shkuro, Sultan-Girey Klych, von Pannwitz - for the fact that “they waged an armed struggle against the Soviet Union through the White Guard detachments they formed and carried out active espionage, sabotage and terrorist activities against the USSR.” On January 16, 1947, Krasnov and others were hanged in Lefortovo prison.
Peter Wrangel
Pyotr Nikolaevich Wrangel was a Russian military commander from the main leaders of the White movement during the Civil War. Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Army in Crimea and Poland. Lieutenant General of the General Staff. Knight of St. George. He received the nickname “Black Baron” for his traditional everyday dress - a black Cossack Circassian coat with gazyrs.
On April 25, 1928, he died suddenly in Brussels after suddenly contracting tuberculosis. According to his family, he was poisoned by the brother of his servant, who was a Bolshevik agent. He was buried in Brussels. Subsequently, Wrangel's ashes were transferred to Belgrade, where they were solemnly reburied on October 6, 1929 in the Russian Church of the Holy Trinity.
Nikolai Yudenich
Nikolai Yudenich - a Russian military leader, an infantry general - during the Civil War he led the forces operating against Soviet power in the northwestern direction.
He died in 1962 from pulmonary tuberculosis. He was buried first in the Lower Church in Cannes, but subsequently his coffin was transferred to Nice to the Cocade cemetery. On October 20, 2008, in the church fence near the altar of the Church of the Holy Cross Church in the village of Opole, Kingisepp district, Leningrad region, as a tribute to the memory of the fallen ranks of General Yudenich’s army, a monument to the soldiers of the North-Western Army was erected.
Mikhail Alekseev
Mikhail Alekseev was an active participant in the White movement during the Civil War. One of the creators, Supreme Leader of the Volunteer Army.
He died on October 8, 1918 from pneumonia and after a two-day farewell to thousands of people, he was buried in the Military Cathedral of the Kuban Cossack Army in Yekaterinodar. Among the wreaths laid on his grave, one attracted the attention of the public with its genuine touchingness. It was written on it: “They didn’t see, but they knew and loved.” During the retreat of the white troops at the beginning of 1920, his ashes were taken to Serbia by relatives and colleagues and reburied in Belgrade. During the years of communist rule, in order to avoid the destruction of the grave of the founder and leader of the “White Cause,” the slab on his grave was replaced with another, on which only two words were laconically written: “Mikhail the Warrior.”
"White" and "Red" movements in the Civil War 27.10.2017 09:49
Every Russian knows that the Civil War of 1917-1922 was opposed by two movements - “red” and “white”. But among historians there is still no consensus on where it began. Some believe that the reason was Krasnov's March on the Russian capital (October 25); others believe that the war began when, in the near future, the commander of the Volunteer Army Alekseev arrived on the Don (November 2); There is also an opinion that the war began with Miliukov proclaiming the “Declaration of the Volunteer Army”, delivering a speech at the ceremony called the Don (December 27).
Another popular opinion, which is far from unfounded, is the opinion that the Civil War began immediately after the February Revolution, when the entire society was split into supporters and opponents of the Romanov monarchy.
"White" movement in Russia
Everyone knows that “whites” are adherents of the monarchy and the old order. Its beginnings were visible back in February 1917, when the monarchy was overthrown in Russia and a total restructuring of society began. The development of the “white” movement took place during the period when the Bolsheviks came to power and the formation of Soviet power. They represented a circle of people dissatisfied with the Soviet government, who disagreed with its policies and principles of its conduct.
The “Whites” were fans of the old monarchical system, refused to accept the new socialist order, and adhered to the principles of traditional society. It is important to note that the “whites” were often radicals; they did not believe that it was possible to agree on anything with the “reds”; on the contrary, they had the opinion that no negotiations or concessions were acceptable.
The “Whites” chose the Romanov tricolor as their banner. The white movement was commanded by Admiral Denikin and Quiver, one in the South, the other in the harsh regions of Siberia.
The historical event that became the impetus for the activation of the “whites” and the transition to their side of most of the former army of the Romanov Empire was the rebellion of General Kornilov, which, although suppressed, helped the “whites” strengthen their ranks, especially in the southern regions, where, under the leadership of the general Alekseev began to gather enormous resources and a powerful, disciplined army. Every day the army was replenished with new arrivals, it grew rapidly, developed, hardened, and trained.
Separately, it is necessary to say about the commanders of the White Guards (that was the name of the army created by the “white” movement). They were unusually talented commanders, prudent politicians, strategists, tacticians, subtle psychologists, and skillful speakers. The most famous were Lavr Kornilov, Anton Denikin, Alexander Kolchak, Pyotr Krasnov, Pyotr Wrangel, Nikolai Yudenich, Mikhail Alekseev. We can talk about each of them for a long time; their talent and services to the “white” movement can hardly be overestimated.
The White Guards won the war for a long time, and even let down their troops in Moscow. But the Bolshevik army grew stronger, and they were supported by a significant part of the Russian population, especially the poorest and most numerous layers - workers and peasants. In the end, the forces of the White Guards were smashed to smithereens. For some time they continued to operate abroad, but without success, the “white” movement ceased.
"Red" movement
Like the “Whites,” the “Reds” had many talented commanders and politicians in their ranks. Among them, it is important to note the most famous, namely: Leon Trotsky, Brusilov, Novitsky, Frunze. These military leaders showed themselves excellently in battles against the White Guards. Trotsky was the main founder of the Red Army, which acted as the decisive force in the confrontation between the “whites” and the “reds” in the Civil War. The ideological leader of the “red” movement was Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, known to every person. Lenin and his government were actively supported by the most massive sections of the population of the Russian State, namely the proletariat, the poor, land-poor and landless peasants, and the working intelligentsia. It was these classes that most quickly believed the tempting promises of the Bolsheviks, supported them and brought the “Reds” to power.
The main party in the country became the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party of the Bolsheviks, which was later turned into a communist party. In essence, it was an association of intelligentsia, adherents of the socialist revolution, whose social base was the working classes.
It was not easy for the Bolsheviks to win the Civil War - they had not yet completely strengthened their power throughout the country, the forces of their fans were dispersed throughout the vast country, plus the national outskirts began a national liberation struggle. A lot of effort went into the war with the Ukrainian People's Republic, so the Red Army soldiers had to fight on several fronts during the Civil War.
Attacks by the White Guards could come from any direction on the horizon, because the White Guards surrounded the Red Army from all sides with four separate military formations. And despite all the difficulties, it was the “Reds” who won the war, mainly thanks to the broad social base of the Communist Party.
All representatives of the national outskirts united against the White Guards, and therefore they became forced allies of the Red Army in the Civil War. To attract residents of the national outskirts to their side, the Bolsheviks used loud slogans, such as the idea of a “united and indivisible Russia.”
The Bolshevik victory in the war was brought about by the support of the masses. The Soviet government played on the sense of duty and patriotism of Russian citizens. The White Guards themselves also added fuel to the fire, since their invasions were most often accompanied by mass robbery, looting, and violence in other forms, which could not in any way encourage people to support the “white” movement.
Results of the Civil War
As has already been said several times, victory in this fratricidal war went to the “reds”. The fratricidal civil war became a real tragedy for the Russian people. The material damage caused to the country by the war was estimated to be about 50 billion rubles - unimaginable money at that time, several times greater than the amount of Russia's external debt. Because of this, the level of industry decreased by 14%, and agriculture by 50%. According to various sources, human losses ranged from 12 to 15 million.
Most of these people died from hunger, repression, and disease. During the hostilities, more than 800 thousand soldiers on both sides gave their lives. Also during the Civil War, the balance of migration fell sharply - about 2 million Russians left the country and went abroad.
The essence of the Civil War and its “culprits”
Leaders of political parties began a discussion on this issue. The Bolsheviks believed that the Civil War, a more acute form of class struggle, was imposed on workers and peasants by former exploiters who were trying to restore the monarchy. Opponents of the Bolsheviks argued that the Bolsheviks were the first to use violence and the opposition was forced to take part in the Civil War.
From a universal human point of view, the Civil War is a historical drama, a tragedy of the people. It brought suffering, sacrifices, destruction of the economy and culture. The culprits were both “red” and “white”. History justifies only those who made compromises without wanting to shed blood. This compromise position was occupied by the so-called “third force” - the parties of the Mensheviks, Socialist Revolutionaries, and anarchists.
The civil war, due to its vast expanse, resulted in different forms: military operations of the fronts of regular armies, armed clashes of individual detachments, mutinies and uprisings behind enemy lines, partisan movement, banditry, terror, etc.
"White" movement
Heterogeneous in composition: Russian officers, the old bureaucracy, monarchist parties and groups, liberal cadet parties, Octobrists, a number of left-wing political movements that fluctuated between “whites” and “reds,” workers and peasants dissatisfied with surplus appropriation, the establishment of a dictatorship and the suppression of democracy .
The program of the white movement: the restoration of a united and indivisible Russia, the convening of a national assembly on the basis of universal suffrage, civil liberties, land reform, progressive land legislation.
However, in practice, the solution to many issues caused discontent among the overwhelming majority of the population: agrarian question- decided in favor of the landowner, canceling the Decree on Land. The peasantry wavered between two evils - surplus appropriation carried out by the Bolsheviks, and the actual restoration of landownership; national question- the slogan of a single indivisible Russia was associated among the national bourgeoisie with the bureaucratic oppression of the monarchical center. He clearly conceded to the Bolshevik idea of the right of nations to self-determination, even to the point of secession; work question~ trade unions and socialist parties were banned.
"Red" movement
The basis was the dictatorship of the Bolshevik Party, which relied on the most lumpen layers of the working class and the poorest peasantry. The Bolsheviks managed to create a strong Red Army, which in 1921 numbered 5.5 million people, of which 70 thousand were workers, more than 4 million peasants and 300 thousand members of the Bolshevik Party.
The Bolshevik leadership pursued sophisticated political tactics of attracting bourgeois specialists. Former officers and alliances with the middle peasants were attracted, relying on the poor peasants. However, for the Bolsheviks themselves it was not clear which of the peasants should be classified as the middle peasant, who as the poor peasant and the kulak - all this was a political situation.
Two dictatorships and petty-bourgeois democracy
The civil war resulted in a struggle between two dictatorships - “white” and “red”, between which, as between a rock and a hard place, petty-bourgeois democracy found itself. Petty-bourgeois democracy could not stand anywhere (in Siberia - the Committee of the Constituent Assembly (Komuch) was overthrown by A.V. Kolchak; in the south - the Directory, liquidated by A.I. Denikin, did not last long; in the north - the Socialist-Revolutionary-Menshevik government of N.V. Tchaikovsky was overthrown by Soviet power).
Results and lessons of the Civil War
* the country lost more than 8 million people as a result of the Red and White Terror, famine and disease; about 2 million people emigrated, and this is the political, financial, industrial, scientific and artistic elite of pre-revolutionary Russia;
the war undermined the country's genetic fund and became a tragedy for the Russian intelligentsia, which was looking for truth and truth in the revolution, but found terror;
economic damage amounted to 50 billion gold rubles. Industrial production in 1920 compared to 1913 decreased by 7 times, agricultural production by 38%;
The task of political parties is to seek a peaceful path of transformation and preserve civil peace.
Reasons for the Bolshevik victory
o thanks to the policy of “war communism” they were able to mobilize resources and create a strong army;
o the “white” movement made a number of mistakes: they canceled the Bolshevik Decree on Land; the Bolsheviks pursued more flexible tactics of negotiations and temporary alliances with anarchists, socialists (Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks); on the national question, the white movement put forward the slogan “Russia is united and indivisible,” and the Bolsheviks were more flexible - “the right of nations to self-determination, even to the point of secession”;
o created a powerful propaganda network (political literacy courses, propaganda trains, posters, films, leaflets);
o proclaimed patriotism - the defense of the socialist Fatherland from the White Guards as proteges of interventionists and foreign states;
o career prospects for growth opened up for workers and peasants: promoted workers and peasants who joined the party occupy administrative positions in the city and countryside.
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