The Russian Civil War and the Red Terror: 1918-1922

     

      Andrew Andersen

      Maps:     The Penguin Atlas of World History / 1995

 

                        

 

   

    

 

 

Every civil war is a tragedy for the nation involved. The tragedy for Russia was aggravated by its relative backwardness, its enormous territory, the mass illiteracy of its population, and by the pompous promises of a better world to come, which never came true.

 

Mikhail Khvostov, 1996

 

 

The Civil War that ravaged Russia in 1918-1926 major military operations being over by 1922 signaled the beginning of a dramatic transformation of both the fallen Eurasian empire and, probably, the rest of the world. It resulted in tremendous loss of population, destruction of national wealth and deep moral and spiritual crisis. Although all the war parties (not limited to Whites and Reds) occasionally committed atrocities and mass murders, it was the Red Terror that decimated the nation and destroyed the whole structure of the Russian society.

 

Here you can read a few articles covering the Russian Civil War from various perspectives and providing basic knowledge about that tragic episode of modern Russian history.

 

 

THE DIRTY WAR by Nicholas Werth

 

BEGINNING OF TERROR by Tatyana Shvetsova

 

THE RUSSIAN CIVIL WAR by James Graham

 

THE CIVIL WAR by Tatyana Shvetsova

 

 

MILITARY COMMUNISM by Tatyana Shvetsova

 

 

INTERVENTION by Tatyana Shvetsova

 

 

WHY DID THE REDS WIN? by Tatyana Shvetsova

 

 

 

 

There was also a series of wars against the new independent nations that emerged out of the debris of the collapsed Russian Empire. The below articles provide the description and analysis of the conflicts between the Soviet Russia and her neighbors some of them sovietized and absorbed to form the new Soviet empire later known as the Soviet Union or the USSR.

 

THE POLISH-SOVIET WAR by Anna M. Cienciala

 

THE SOVIET-UKRAINIAN WAR by Arkaniy Zhukovsky

 

THE SOVIET-GEORGIAN WAR by Andrew Andersen and George Partskhaladze

 

MAKHNO GUERILLA MOVEMENT IN THE UKRAINE / TBA

 

ESTONIA AND LATVIA: THE WAR OF LIBERATION / TBA