Russian Civil war

The Russian civil war is the whole of the events which tear Russia during four years, of the beginning of 1918 at the end of 1921. It is located in the prolongation of the Russian Révolution of October 1917 and continues until the proclamation of NEP.

The Russian Civil war does not oppose simply the revolutionists Bolcheviks to the “Blancs” Monarchistes in favor of the return to the old mode tsarist. The ruinous violence of the conflict is not due either only to the shock of the terrors “white” and “red” decided of in-high. This civil war is initially an indescribable and very violent chaos, where the Russian State and the company disintegrated under the push of multiple centrifugal forces, until their rebuilding and their resumption in hand by the victorious Bolsheviks.

The war indeed saw the other revolutionary formations (Mencheviks, SR, Anarchistes, appointed theConstituent one to also fight against the Bolcheviks, sometimes in an autonomous way, sometimes at the price of a collusion compromising with the white generals. The attempts at emancipation of national minorities, the action of the “green Armed ” country (hostile at the same time with the Bolsheviks and the White), the defense of competitor society projects (anarchistic Makhnovchina in Ukraine), the foreign intervention, the multiple settlings of score and the spontaneous outbursts of violence could only add to the disorders. Lastly, the reversals of alliance and internal divisions did not miss, nor the reversals of situation: Kiev exchange thus 14 times of hand during the war.

The Bolsheviks profited from their higher organization and their discipline. Although they met (and repressed) of virulent popular resistances, their program was finally much less badly received masses than that of the White, which tended to the pure and simple return at the former state of the things. The camp of the opponents to the revolution of October suffered from its heterogeneity and its disunions.

Certain “white” generals such Kornilov worry in fact very little to restore monarchy, and see themselves very well with the head of a dictatorial Republic. Their projects precede partly the Fascisme S Europeans.

According to Serge Wolikow, “the civil war forms the Party and manufactures a policy identified with the revolution without being that which had been dreamed. Between 1918 and 1921-1922, is set up a revolutionary State: the civil war is perceived at the same time like the continuation of the revolution”.

First steps

In January 1918, the revolution in Finland, is repressed by the “white ”, helped by the German division of the general Von der Goltz. Repression is brutal. The red prisoners are killed with the machine-gun in ditches. White terror makes 35.000 dead in a country of 4 million inhabitants. At the beginning of May 1918, one counts 64 concentration camps including/understanding 81.000 prisoners (that is to say 6% of the Finnish adult population), primarily divided in the south of the country. The enormous difficulty that represents the maintenance of such a massive prison system in Finland destroyed by the civil war leads the government of Helsinki quickly to set up laws of amnesty. At the beginning of June 1918, the camps are not gathered in 26 gradually dismantled places of detention then so that in December, it does not remain any more but 6100 prisoners, considered as most dangerous. At the end of 1921, it will remain nothing any more but 900 imprisoned political. On the whole, one estimates at 12500 the numbers of prisoners died in the first camps of the civil war - with more than 25% of losses for some (as that of Tammisaari) - figure for which it is necessary to add the 268 marked capital executions after the repression of the insurrection Bolshevik.

For the Russian monarchists, it is an example to be followed, and a warning from what awaits the revolutionists if they lost the capacity. Further in time, the Bolsheviks remember the pitiless crushing of the Commune of Paris overcome, at the time of the Bloody Semaine. Didn't Lénine outline a step of dance in snow in the Kremlin, when he realized that its government had just exceeded one day the duration of the Commune?

Until the Treated of Brest-Litovsk in March 1918, various national groups, in particular in Ukraine and in the the Caucasus, make profitable the situation to try émanciper but the combat remain extremely sporadic.

The foreign intervention

As from April, the Allies - French and British - intervene in the north and the south of the country, but initially to counter the German occupation. The Bolsheviks are not initially hostile on their arrival - Trotski advises even with the Soviet of Mourmansk to accept their assistance against any German threat, and initially leaves in the inaccuracy the enemy that the all recent Red Army will have to face: Germans or Allied? The Armistice of Rethondes in addition envisages the cancellation of the disastrous treaty of Brest-Litovsk which the government Bolshevik has of concluding in March 1918.

It is only after their victory of November 1918 that the Allies openly give an opinion against the Reds and at the sides of the “White”. Nauseated by the Treated of Brest-Litovsk which made it possible Kaiser to transfer its divisions of Is in West and to miss little gaining the victory in France, much of Western leaders leave it at the time with the unfounded thesis of Lénine agent of the “Boches”, and conceive at the beginning their intervention like a prolongation of the fight against Germany. Then the fear of the revolutionary contagion mingles with it. As Winston Churchill declared it, certainly particularly virulent anti-Bolshevik even taking into consideration criterion of the time, “the Bolchevism must be strangled in his cradle”. However, its Prime Minister Lloyd George exposes on July 22nd, 1918 that “the type of government set up by the Russians does not look at Great Britain: republic, State Bolshevik or monarchy”. The US president Wilson thinks in the same way, and refuses to engage too far in the intervention.

The idea of Lénine and Trotsky was not to found a mode Socialiste in only Russia, but that extension of the revolution to the industrially advanced countries, as Germany was the only means of saving the revolution.

From the summer 1918, English, German, French, American, Greek, Polish, Rumanian and Japanese intervene. Before the Armistice of Rethondes, the Ukraine remains occupied by the German troops, which reverse the government and deprive Russia of supply corn. The Austrian troops occupy Odessa, the Japanese unload with Vladivostok, the Turks penetrate in the the Caucasus.

English and French arm the general tsarist Dénikine, the Germans division cossack of Krasnov. The white general Kornilov (who will die in 1918) written: “Even if it is necessary to burn half of Russia and to pour the blood of three quarters of the population, we will make it if it is necessary to save Russia”. The white writer written Andreiev: “where one shoots people like dogs, reign peace, the prosperity and a very fine direction of legality”. The pogroms anti-semites which perpetrate or let perpetrate the white generals make several hundreds of thousands of victims and constitute the worst massacres anti-Jews ever perpetrated before the Shoah.

The declarations flamers are not absent from opposite camp. In exile, Lénine theorized the passage of the “civil war imperialist” to the “revolutionary civil war”. The theory Bolshevik judges that violence is an engine of the History. From this point of view, the civil war is inevitable, and even perfectly desirable more quickly to overcome the forces of reaction and to accelerate the social change. As of April 1918, in connection with the detachments in charge of the forced cereal requisitions, Trotski exclaims: “Our party is for the civil war. The civil war, it is the fight for the bread. Live the civil war! ” In the heat of a speech with Petrograd, Zinoviev will be carried in 1919 until speaking to destroy the ten million hostile Russians to the revolution. As for Boukharine, it calls in these terms with police vigilance: “we all must be tchekists. ”

The two principal camps are thus ready with in découdre, and free from any hesitation to resort to the violence of mass. Three principal faces are constituted by various national groups which make profitable the situation to try émanciper:

in the south (armed with the Russian volunteers and that of the cossacks in the area with the Gift, ordered by the general Dénikine),
in the North-West (armed with Ioudénitch),
in Western Siberia (armed with the admiral Koltchak, reinforced by the 40 000 men of the Czech Legion) with Omsk.

With these three faces other more or less autonomous white forces will be added:

in Eastern Siberia: the troops cossacks of Ataman Semenov supported by a strong quota of Japanese “advisers”;
in Mongolia: the Asian division of cavalry of the Baltic baron Ungern von Sternberg

Foundation of the Red Army to the victory

Vis-a-vis the conjugation of the threats, the Soviet government, which already transferred the capital from Petrograd to Moscow before the beginning of the dangers, proclaims the general mobilization and obligatory. Leon Trotski vigorously takes the direction of the Red Army, founded as of the February 23rd 1918: of almost a million men to the end of the year 1918, it will count some more than 5 million two years later, volunteers or conscripts.

Furrowing the country on board its armoured train quickly legendary, Trotski to the other will rectify the military situation, will organize the troops and will galvanize energies from one face. Just as with many police chiefs Bolsheviks on mission, it closely associates in its action a propaganda bound for the masses and of their revolutionary education (agitprop wanted by Lénine celebrates it) and the control of the military combat. It restores in the rows a strict discipline of iron, any failure, dispute or desertion being implacably punished.

He does not hesitate to recycle per thousands the “middle-class specialists” qualified and other former officers tsarists, the such ex-general as a chief Broussilov, who invites his pars to join the Red Army in the name of safety with the fatherland. Political police chiefs Bolsheviks flank these military chiefs to make sure of their honesty. This recourse to the specialists in the old mode causes however mistrust and virulent criticisms of many old men Bolsheviks, with the image of Joseph Stalin, police chief on mission with Tsarytsine at the summer 1918. Approximately 30% of the officers tsarists would have chosen the Red Army, by interest, patriotism or… by concern of the order.

As of the summer 1918, Trotski takes again the important node of Kazan. With Tsarysie on the the Volga, key of the communications in the south of Russia, it runs up - already - against Stalin and Vorochilov, which it makes remind Moscow in September, the city remaining with the hands of the Bolsheviks. Then the Red Army demolishes with white armies while starting with Ioudenitch, which fails in its walk on Petrograd in October 1919, then almost simultaneously mid-November Koltchak and Denikine.

In 1920, the Poland, dissatisfied with the Line Curzon which fixes its limits at the East, invades Russia Bolshevik. The counter-attack of the Red Army leads the general Toukhatchevski to the doors of Warsaw. The Bolsheviks are raised by an immense hope: the catch of Warsaw would open the way of Berlin, and would allow the export of the revolution by the weapons. But a serious disobedience of Stalin puts the Red Army suddenly of strategic vulnerability. In addition, the Poles, who have just found their independence after one century and half of foreign occupation, make block against an invader that they see initially like Russian before seeing it as revolutionist. Even the working or Jewish masses do not express any intention to help the Red Army. The general Pilsudski, helped of the French military mission of the general Weygand (in which the young officer Charles de Gaulle takes part), is based on this national start to rectify the military situation. The August 15th 1920, the Polish army gains a bright victory (“miracle of the the Vistula”) and pushes back the Red Army with more than 200 km in the east of the Ligne Curzon. Moscow must be inclined by treaty, and recognize the loss of an important territory. However, the defeat of the White inside remains as inescapable as front.

The final period of the war was the long seat of the last white forces in the Crimea. Piotr Wrangel had gathered there the remainders of the troops of Dénikine which had been strengthened. They held until the Ukrainian Anarchists and the Red Army, which had taken part in the war against the Poland, unloads. Then the white were overflowed and their last troops evacuated towards Constantinople in November 1920.

The Bolsheviks were turned over then violently against their allies of the day before, breaking the last agreement. At the end of 1920, the government liquidated the Makhnovchtchina. Between spring 1921 and fine 1922, the Red Army also will have invaded and reconquered several temporarily independent Republics (Arménie, Georgia, Central Asia) which are reinstated of force in the Russian ex-empire.

Violences of in-low and terrors of in-high

Russia tsarist was by far the country of Europe with the heaviest tradition of political violence and social. This one was omnipresent top in bottom of the social scale. It did not save more the tsars Romanov (the dynastic history bloodiest of Europe) that humblest victims of the Servage. The long despotic practices of the Knout, of the Capital punishment, the exile to the Katorga of Siberia had marked the Russian history, but also the violence of many country revolts ( bunt ), the recourse to terrorism by various revolutionists of the XIXe century. Overall, the backwardness of the country maintained with the daily newspaper masses illiterate and oppressed in a coarseness and a brutality of manners regularly deplored by the travellers or the reforming elites. Lastly, the Great War of 1914-1917 and its procession of “brutalisations” did not arrange anything.

The violence of the Russian civil war thus does not have only with the shock of the “White” and the “Reds”. As Marc Ferro underlines it, the Bolsheviks often did nothing but assume or encourage spontaneous social violences, in order to recover them or to give the impression which they controlled the situation.

What does not prevent either the multiplication of official measurements of “red Terror” as from the summer 1918. Under the impulse of Felix Dzerjinski, the Tcheka inflates its manpower and, in-outside any legality, gives hunting to the real or supposed opponents, to the suspects, recalcitrant, or to the marginal ones. It takes part in the setting outlaw of the orthodoxe Église, certainly often arranged side of the reaction: approximately 1000 priests and 25 bishops will have perished in 1920. Beyond, all already contributes to put outlaw whoever does not share the vision of the world Bolshevik: thus the Pacifistes tolstoïens pareillement are pareillement eliminated by the political police. It is also used to take of force the supply in the peasants, or to break a growing number of working strikes. In August 1922, the finished war, the State Bolshevik also organizes against his overcome opponents the first great faked lawsuit of the Soviet history: the chiefs SR, amalgamated with defendants of common right and agitators, are judged with the contempts of all the rules of the right, and are condemned for some to death.

Pushed by Lénine and Trotski, the Tchéka inaugurates a system of camps to intern the suspects and repressed: one counts 21 in 1919 of them, more than 100 in 1920, which counts 100 to 150.000 prisoners at the end of the civil war. The Finnish and Russian White also had recourse to camps, in the deplorable living conditions, just like the Poles of Pilsudski. However, only the camps Bolsheviks disappear by no means with the end from the conflict, the system concentrationnaire becoming permanent, although its population knows a considerable reduction in first half of the Années 1920. The question of knowing if it is well in them that are the Origines of Gulag of the Stalinist era remains very discussed.

Trotski, which restored an iron discipline in the Red Army, is also at the origin of the “law of the hostages”: the children and wives of officers tsarists recycled by the Red Army are stopped and held to make sure of the honesty of the man - first introduction of the concept of collective responsibility into the Soviet practices. Although Trotski in addition wished a public lawsuit of Nicolas II, the last tsar is shot with all his family in the night from July 17th to 18th 1918, with Iekaterinbourg, on secret decision of Lénine and of part of the Political office (approach of the white armies providing only the pretext to apply a decision taken in fact of long time). The White will accommodate the death of the imperial family with enough of indifference.

The hardest fight opposes especially the Bolsheviks - just like the White - to campaigns which often refuse the Conscription and the obligatory cereal deliveries (ruin of industry since 1915-1916 having deprived the towns of goods of production to be offered in exchange to the campaigns). The forced Réquisitions are accomplished at the indescribable prices of exactions, which revolt the farming community. “green Armées refractory” formed to enrôlement are formed in the forests and the campaigns, and fight in turn or simultaneously against the two armies. The campaigns thus seek to maintain their autonomy vis-a-vis an urban capacity traditionally badly accepted.

The crushing of hundreds of local country revolts culminates at the summer 1921 when Toukhatchevski represses the vast revolt of the peasants of the area of Tambov. During this true military countryside, the Red Army even had recourse against the peasants to the bombardments to the Chemical weapon. The toughening of the two camps made disappear any intermediate alternative. Indeed, the outer wing, reactionary and tsarist quickly took the control of the whole of the opposition to the Bolsheviks. In June 1918, with Samara, a committee of ex-Components ( Komoutch ), had proposed a program reformist and democratic. In the same way, with Oufa, in September, a face antibolchevik unified had formed a provisional government and a sitting directory with Omsk. But the extreme-right-hand side quickly has the top on them: Koltchak shift this directory as of November 1918, and takes the title of “supreme regent of Russia”.

Massacres and tortures are currency in one and the other camp the White supplicient and kill pitilessly the Bolsheviks made captive. They perpetrate or let their troops perpetrate a series of Pogroms extremely fatal Antisémites, bloodiest ever made until there in the history (400 000 dead?). They alienate the local populations quickly by refusing any concession with the national minorities, to which they do not have anything to offer but the return to nationalism most traditional large-Russian. They also violently dispossess the peasants, anxious of a probable return of the great landowners in the vans of the white armies.

Victoire and crisis of the “Communism of war”

Although the Bolsheviks do not control any more at the 1918 qu summer ' an encircled territory and approximately reduces to the old Grand Duchy Moscovie, they have the advantage of forming a coherent territorial block, provided very well in roads and strategic railways, vis-a-vis dispersed white armies and which will be never able to coordinate their offensives. They remain always Masters of the two capitals.

They also profited from many sympathies in the popular classes and the left forces of Occident: thus the revolt of the French fleet of the Black Sea led inter alia by Andre Marty and Charles Tillon (March 1919) played a big role in the abandonment of the French intervention. In addition, the masses let gain the Bolsheviks, in spite of many clashes. If the Bolsheviks requisitioned the grains, the White them wanted to return the ground to the great landowners. All to take, the farming community thus preferred the victory of the “Reds”.

The civil war accelerated considerably the revolutionary process by the introduction of a “Communism of war” (posterior term with the facts) particularly radical. The Party was militarized while increasing its manpower notably. Since 1918, the nationalizations touched to the stores and with the shops of hairstyle. In November 1920, a decree confirms the Nationalization of all the factories of more than 5 workmen (if they have an engine) and of more than 10 workmen if not. One also nationalized all the theaters, cinema industry, that of photography. The State founds the Monopole domestic trade and external, and takes in hand the near total of the services. Many Bolsheviks even dream to benefit from these measurements imposed by the All-out war to pass directly to the construction of the company Communiste: thus the State ensures from now on free at all the public services, housing, electricity, and until the public baths, and that some think even of the abolition of the Argent, at least with a drastic limitation of its use. Economic efficiency did not follow at all, especially under the disastrous conditions of time.

An iron discipline was restored on the workmen. The nationalization generalized meant the end of working control proclaimed in October 1917, and which had been a principal claim of the Working class. The wage the piece honni of all was re-established as of the April 3rd 1918. To the introduction of” worked ““communist Saturday voluntarily” are added the re-establishment of the working Livret, the prohibition and the brutal repression of the strikes, the deportation of the imprisoned leaders, the recourse to the Lock-out, the militarization of work, the introduction of an obligatory work.

A certain number of reforms were also introduced as of 1918: for example passage to the Gregorian Calendar, or separation of the Church and the State (followed however by years of antireligieuse violence and the creation of a “alive Church” controlled by the capacity). As of the shortly after October 1917, the Bolsheviks did not hesitate either to put under sequestration the private assets held in the safes of the banks, or with Collectiviser the vast apartments middle-class or noble, whose former owners are often expelled even reduced to the street. The famous collective apartments were born, which will mark the daily life of the Soviets until the end of the the USSR and beyond.

In addition, of the trains of propaganda all the country furrowed to ensure the revolutionary education of the masses, also offered to the innumerable conscripts and to volunteers of the Red Army. An ambitious program of fight against the Analphabétisme was set up by Lénine well before the end of the engagements, as well as development of the culture physical and sporting, of fight against the Alcoolisme and the Antisémitisme… the Komsomol were founded as of November 1918 to convert Soviet youth. Many artists and intellectuals even not-Bolsheviks rejoined the revolution of October, such Maïakovski, Alexander Blok, Sergueï Essénine, or Marc Chagall become police chief with the Culture with Vitebsk. In the prolongation of “the open money age” about 1900, the literature and the modern arts know under the civil war a true flowering (in particular daN the poster and arts pictorial, essential in a company massively illiterate), brilliant in spite of the extreme hardness of times. The revolution of October thus has also a dimension of Cultural revolution.

Beginning 1921, the revolution is thus saved, but at a terrifying price. The country territorialement is reduced, diplomatically insulated, and encircled by a “medical cord” of small hostile States to the Bolchevism as with the Russian power.

Moscow and Petrograd lost half of their population, part in the countryside in front of the bankruptcy of the urban supply. The Famine of 1920 - 1921 does itself several million dead among peasants already very tested by the war and the violence of the collections forced. The very fatal epidemic of Typhus adds to the drama. One attends cases of Cannibalisme. Bands of wandering orphans, the bespryzorniki , will furrow the roads of Russia during years.

The management of the crisis by Lénine will cause heavy controversies. The weather makes expel the international committee of help to the victims, and benefits especially from the famine to be hand-low on the goods of the orthodoxe Église, without same as those benefit the famished ones. Certain historians will show Lénine used the famine to subject the recalcitrant areas (method taken again then by Stalin in Ukraine at the time of the Holodomor): “It is precisely now, which the areas in famine eat of the human flesh, and which thousands of corpses strew the ways, which we must carry out the confiscation of the goods of the church with the most wild energy and most pitiless, and crush any inclination of resistance, with such a brutality that one will speak about it during tens of years. ”

The industrial production crumbled. The grid system is dislocated. The Black-market is flourishing. The currency which is not worth anything any more disappeared and one attends the return of the Troc.

The Working class broke up, because much workers of factory entered the Red Army, or the bureaucracy of the Party and Tchéka. Many others still are driven out cities by the hunger, and go back to the countryside. When with Xe congress of the Party in March 1921, Lénine deplores with the platform the disappearance of the Working class in Russia, Alexandre Chliapnikov, one of the very rare leaders having experience of the factory work, ironically congratulates it “to exert the power in the name of a class which does not exist”…

The Party rebuilt a State, for the first time since the disintegration of the tsarism which had even preceded February 1917. It also eliminated all the oppositions, set up a police State frightening, removed or repressed the independent institutions, the such Churches. It also took the control of the Soviets, quickly reduced to bureaucratized and deprived empty shells of real capacity. The committees of factory or district which proliferated since 1914 and especially 1917 were “phagocytes” by the Party. As for the Trade unions, little bolchevized in 1917 but transformed into driving belt during the civil war, Trotski proposes at the end of 1920 their “militarization”, causing polemical sharp within the Party.

The end of any pluralism is badly felt until by certain actors of the revolution of October, just as the ditch grows hollow between a good portion of the population and the new leaders or the bureaucrats, judged like new privileged people.

The Revolt of Kronstadt and the NEP (March 1921)

In March 1921, the sailors of Kronstadt, celebrated until there like the “heroes and glory of the revolution” (Trotski) revolt with the cry of “Sharp the Soviets, with bottom the Bolsheviks! ” or of “Sharp the Soviets without the Communists! ”. Many the sailors are of origin country, and informed by their families of the exactions Bolsheviks in the campaigns; their revolt is also contemporary of a wave of working strikes to Petrograd. Their program requires free elections, Constituent, the return of fundamental freedoms, the end of the political police, the return to the open market.

The Red Army led by Trotski and Toukhatchevski ends up taking by storm the island of Kronstadt while passing to foot the cold sea. A repression relentless falls down on revolted, certain incomes against promise of life saves are shot after having to dig their tombs. Others flee to be interned in Finland under deplorable conditions.

Police repression also falls down with Petrograd on tens of people without bond between them and wrongfully accused of complicities with the insurrection, thus the poet Nicolas Goumilov, first husband of Anna Akhmatova, which is shot and striped official memory. In parallel, of the thousands of Mencheviks are stopped and their removed press: they had remained up to that point while being confined with a legal opposition to the capacity, and by preserving a considerable audience in the trade unions and the masses. At the same time, Xe congress of the Party founds also the democratic Centralisme, which removes the right of tendency. The working Opposition of Alexandra Kollontaï and Alexandre Chliapnikov, which criticized the methods of the “Communism of war”, is thus demolished and obliged to incline itself.

The large last revolts political revolutionary cycle open in February 1917 is thus completed on a failure, leaving intact the monopoly Bolshevik of the capacity. But the shock of the insurrection convinced Lénine definitively to give up the “Communism of war” to the profit of a “return limited to limited capitalism”: the 10th congress, held at the same moment that the insurrection, also founds has Nouvelle economic policy (NEP).

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