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The Brest-Litovsk peace agreement between Germany and Communist Russia galvanized
significant portions of Russia's
population to violently oppose the Bolshevik government. The White armies evolved out of this opposition
and became the principal threat to the Bolshevik
regime. They were however only one dimension of the Civil War as other
groups and nations played important roles. The defeat of the Whites was
caused primarily by their failure to enlist mass support for their cause.
Geography, internal division and patriotism also contributed to their defeat.
The Whites fought on a
variety of fronts against the Reds with the
most important being the East, South and North Western. The principal leader
for each was Admiral Kolchak, General Denikin and General Iudenich
respectively. Kolchak was nominally head of the movement mainly because the
allies recognized him as such. In practice the White armies were completely
independent. It was also the allies namely Britain,
France, Japan and the United States which
lent the most support to the Whites. It was this support that allowed the
Whites to become the dominant opposition to the Communists. All three armies
were reasonably cohesive groups with a clear command and control structure
with total numbers peaking at over 250,000 troops. It was this organized
nature that made them the Reds most dangerous adversaries. Contributed to
this were the White's underlying political motives for fighting. These were
to restore the Provisional Government and to return Russia to the old order of the
conservative ruling class. The Whites were by far the largest, most organized
and best supported organization committed to the overthrow of the Bolsheviks.
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Admiral Alexander Kolchak
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General Anton Denikin
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General Nikolai Iudenich
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Peasant armies or Greens as they
became known fought both sides in the Civil War. The White and Red armies
required a large amount of conscripts and supplies for their campaigns. The
easiest source for these was from rural Russia but conscription and grain
requisitions badly alienated the peasants under their control. Many peasants
and villages were pushed towards starvation and responded by killing the
requisition squads and other officials. These outbreaks of violence quickly
spread into outward rebellions with repressive measures against rebelling
villages merely acting to spread the disturbances. There were 344 peasant
revolts by mid 1919 and by 1920 the revolts had become widespread. These
armies sometimes up to a thousand strong disrupted the supply lines and
resource base's of both sides but failed to unite into a cohesive national
force. Throughout the Civil War large areas of the two sides territory were
engulfed by hundreds of distinct peasant revolts.
No less than eleven countries attacked Russia during the Civil War. On
the whole these countries did not coordinate their activities and followed
localized objectives. The Czechoslovak legion of ex prisoners of war started
the Civil War in Siberia with their Railway
War. Instead of allowing themselves to be disarmed the legion conquered a
large stretch of territory along the Trans-Siberian railway, an area that
became the basis of Kolchak's government in the East. The Czechs lost
interest after World War One and minimized their role in the fighting. Britain and France
invaded both Murmansk and Archangel
and set up a weak White government in the North. Japan and to a lesser extent
the United States and Canada invaded Russia in the Pacific. The
Japanese also set up a White government under Grigorii Semenov and occupied Vladivostok until
October 1922. While the allies did intervene in the Civil War they did so for
their own interests and to nurture the White opposition.
Many parts of the former
Tsarist Empire attempted to gain independence during the Civil War. The three Baltic states Lithuania, Latvia
and Estonia all
successfully gained independence, as did Finland and
Poland. None could escape the Civil War with
all a playing a part. Poland
for example waged war against Soviet Russia from 1920-21 over where to draw
the border between the two nations. Other border disputes occurred and many
of the new State gave limited support to either the Reds or more commonly the
Whites. Estonia
became embroiled in the North Western battle with both Reds and Whites
violating its territory. The independently minded parts of the old Russian
Empire could not avoid becoming entangled in the Civil War.
While undeniably a political
movement the White leaders were all military men who disliked politics and
thus largely ignored it. This meant that they could organize an effective
military but not an effective civil administration. Without which the regime
could not sustain the armies at the fronts. Central to this was the failure
to mobilize the local populations in the areas the Whites controlled. Right
and centre-right parties predominated in the White governments and these
parties never had much popular support in Russia. Together with the
generals they ruled out any form of land reform.
The average peasant preferred the Soviet program of peace, land reform and
worker control as the lesser of the two evils. With these sentiments it is
little wonder four out of five peasants forcibly conscripted deserted the
White cause many to the Reds. While the Red army lost four million men up to
1921 their population base allowed them to replace these losses more easily
than the Whites could. Under such conditions the Whites relied heavily on terror
to administer local regions. The result being the Green revolts which drew
precious White troops from the front. The Whites failure to agree to land
reform lost them the mass support they so desperately required.
Control of the heartland of Russia
gave the Reds many advantages. They controlled the largest chunk of the
population and most of the war industry. The Red Army outnumbered the White
armies by ten to one. Furthermore its population was ethnically homogenous
containing mostly Great Russians. The Whites on the other hand gained a large
amount of their support from ethnic minorities. Support was often given in
the hope of gaining some form of independence in the future. White leaders
however believed in a "Russia,
one and indivisible." This created much internal bickering in the White
organization with ethnic groups like the Cossacks
often refusing to fight. Moscow and Petrograd also stayed in Red hands for the entire Civil
War. The symbolic importance of this fact is summed up by Lebedev one of the
White leaders in Siberia "In Moscow we
would get the whole brain of our country, all her soul, all that is talented
in Russia."
The Soviet government had many initial advantages over the White forces.
Geography also aided the
Reds and hindered the Whites. The three main White armies were all located at
opposite ends of Russia.
There was a 10,500 kilometers voyage between Denikin's and Kolchak's armies.
This distance made communication extremely difficult something the Reds with
control of the existing communications networks had an advantage in. The
large size of Russia
also gave the Reds strategic depth. When under attack on one front they could
safely give ground until troops were transferred from other fronts to repel
the attack. Geographically Russia
was unsuited to the attacking White armies.
The Civil War was fought between the Reds and the Whites with many other
factions, groups and nations involved. Considering the enormous difficulties
the Whites faced it should not be asked why they lost the Civil War. The
question is why they did so well for so long against an enemy technically
superior in almost all aspects.
Russian Civil War
Bibliography
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Francesco, 'The Red Army' in Edward Acton, Vladmir Cherniaev and William
Rosenberg, eds, Critical Companion to the Russian Revolution 1914-1921,
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Carr,
Edward, The Russian Revolution: From Lenin to Stalin (1917-1929), London, 1970.
Figes, Orlando, A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution
1891-1924, London,
1996.
Mawdsley,
Evan, 'The Civil War: The Military Campaigns' in Edward Acton, Vladmir
Cherniaev and William Rosenberg, eds, Critical Companion to the Russian
Revolution 1914-1921, London, 1997, pp. 93-106.
Mawdsley,
Evan, The Russian Civil War, Boston,
1987.
Mawdsley,
Evan, 'The White Armies' in Edward Acton, Vladmir Cherniaev and William
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