The Civil War and War Communism (1918-21) - Encyclopedia Britannica Moscow lived in fear of an attack during the 1920s and concluded a number of peace treaties and nonaggression pacts with neighbouring and other countries. By destroying the Polish army we are destroying the Versailles settlement. In the end a Soviet-sponsored government for liberated Poland, headed by Julian Marchlewski, Feliks Dzerzhinsky, and Feliks Kon, which had already established itself at Biaystok, had to flee back to Moscow. They refused, defeated attempts of the local soviets to disarm them, and took control of the Trans-Siberian Railroad. His view, which was strongly supported by many Polish communists who were on the Russian side, was that the Russians would be greeted as revolutionary liberators. The Far Eastern Republic had now served its purpose, and its assembly in November formally voted it out of existence and united it to Soviet Russia. Russo-Polish War, also called Polish-Soviet War, (191920), military conflict between Soviet Russia and Poland. Please email digital@historytoday.com if you have any problems. They had plenty. Lenins death in January 1924 set off a succession struggle that lasted until the end of the decade. Russian Civil War, (1918-20), conflict in which the Red Army successfully defended the newly formed Bolshevik government led by Vladimir I. Lenin against various Russian and interventionist anti-Bolshevik armies. Kolchak advanced in the Urals and had attained his greatest success by April. Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. Not even the appearance of elements of the Soviet Fourth Army in his left rear deterred him. It was belatedly founded in 1990. Several foreign powers who opposed the Bolshevik regime also contributed troops, weapons, supplies and intelligence to the Whites. The second British, French and American units were all sent to various Russian ports to support White forces while Japanese troops occupied Vladivostok in the east. The Japanese delegates at the Washington Conference of 192122 promised the U.S. government that they would withdraw all their troops from Russian territory. They introduced They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. The identification with the Tsarists isolated both workers and peasants also created a drawback to the whites. The story was the same in the countryside. Fifthly, Pisudski divined this intention and, after discussions with Rozwadowski and Weygand, wrote on the night of August 56, 1920, his historic order of the day prescribing (1) that in the south the enemy should be stopped east of Lviv (now in Ukraine); (2) that in the north the left flank of the Polish forces should be covered and the right bank of the Vistula should be held for the defense of Warsaw; and (3) that in the centre an army of five divisions should be concentrated on the Wieprz River for a strategic maneuver designed to disrupt the rear of the Soviet armies as they approached Warsaw. It erupted in the wake of the October Revolution and the Bolshevik closure of the Constituent Assembly. Some foreign powers were chiefly interested in protecting resources previously lent to Russia. The Bolsheviks had practically one the civil war and even had non-bolsheviks supporting them. When Kolchak was defeated in 1919, the foreign armies went home. Trotsky introduced war communism at the right time to insure the winning of the Bolsheviks. Yudenich retreated into Estonia, and Denikin, his communications greatly overextended, was driven back from Oryol in an increasingly disorderly march, which ended with the evacuation of the remnants of his army, in March 1920, from Novorossiysk. 10 Facts About the Russian Civil War | History Hit Habeck, Mary R. White Army. Encyclopedia of Russian History. In the next months there was a marked drawing together of two main groups of Russian opponents of Lenin: (1) the non-Bolshevik left, who had been finally alienated from Lenin by his dissolution of the Constituent Assembly and (2) the rightist whites, whose main asset was the Volunteer Army in the Kuban steppes. Russia signalled her withdrawal from World War One soon after the October Revolution of 1917, and the country turned in on itself with a bloody civil war . Compared to the Whites, the Reds has done a lot better job treating the peasant. Why did the Bolsheviks Win the Russian Civil War. How and why did the Bolsheviks win the Russian Civil War? The French in Ukraine were bewildered by the confused struggle between Russian Communists, Russian Whites, and Ukrainian nationalists, and they withdrew their forces during March and April 1919, having hardly fired a shot. History Hit 19 Aug 2020 On the 11 August 1903, the Russian Social Democratic Labour party met for their Second Party Congress. As a consequence, foreign troops began withdrawing from Russia in 1919. These events caused the Moscow government to crack down heavily on non-Bolshevik socialists. The Communists had been driven out, and the Ukrainian nationalists were divided in their attitude to Denikin, Petlyura being hostile to him, but the Galicians preferring him to the Poles, whom they considered their main enemy. Ever-present hunger exacerbated the poor labour relations, and strikes became endemic, especially in Petrograd. The last white army was defeated in the Crimea in 1920. General Alexeyev, who was the imperial chief of staff under the Tsar, started creating an anti-Bolshevik army immediately after the revolution. He also took officers families hostage to ensure loyalty political commissar attached to each unit. How did the Bolsheviks win the Russian Civil War (1918-22)? Bolshevik Russia, later renamed the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), was the world's first Marxist state. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). Disease, particularly typhus, was rampant, and malnutrition was the natural consequence of Lenins widespread grain confiscations. By the end of the Civil War the Cheka had become a powerful force. History Buff Quiz By general consent the decisive event in the history of the provisional government was Kerensky's conflict with Kornilov, which broke into the open in August (September, New Style). Victory for the Reds - October Revolution - BBC meant that Trotsky could co-ordinate his forces much better, and fight his The Modernisation of Russia 1856-1985. Many historians and researchers studied the Russian civil war, and the reasons for the defeat of the Whites they all agreed on were not always identical. The Civil War was fought between the Reds and the Whites with many different factions, groups and nations involved. They would simply starve to death. Among the early victims of the civil war, which may be considered to have begun in earnest in June 1918, were the former imperial family. The Bolsheviks had successfully negotiated peace with Germany, and Russia's role in the First World War had come to an end when the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed in March 1917. (Western New England College). Lenin helped murdered any Whites they found more than 7000 people were executed, and Red The White Armies and the foreign powers fighting on Russian soil . The working class, the natural constituency of the Communist Party, had to grow rapidly. A ban on factionalism in the party was also imposed. Soviet Union - RSDWP, Lenin's Return, Kornilov Affair The Russian Civil War. Many communists regarded Russia as acquiring imperialist ambitions. Jzef Pisudski, provisional head of the Polish state and commander in chief of the nascent Polish army, decided not to interfere with the retreat of the German forces from Russia, provided that they went through East Prussia. (Western New England College). The red guards, Latvian riflemen, other soviet forces proved to be an eager but ill-disciplined force; so it fell to Trotsky, as commissar of war, to build a conventional army. These White regimes were backed and assisted by foreign governments, particularly the major Allies, though they were reluctant to become directly involved in the Civil War. They boycotted the elections to the First State Duma (Russian parliament) in 1906 and refused to cooperate with the government and other political parties in subsequent Dumas. reason was that the Whites were disunited. The ousting of the Tsarist regime, which also became known as Red October as a part of the greater Russian Revolution of 1917, took place on October 25th 1917 with an armed revolt. The Civil War was fought on several fronts by different leaders and . Many White generals, while capable soldiers, either had political ambitions of their own or distrusted those of their fellow White commanders. The Polish army group under the elderly Stanisaw Szeptycki, comprising 12 infantry divisions and one cavalry brigade (about 120,000 combatants), started a general retreat. As many as 10 million lives were lost as a result of the Russian Civil War, and the overwhelming majority of these were civilian casualties. reason was Trotsky, who was a brilliant war leader and strategist, so the Red At the same time, Gen. Nikolay N. Yudenich advanced from Estonia to the outskirts of Petrograd (St. Petersburg). whites were disunited, the Bolsheviks maintained absolute unity through Terror. The Russian Civil War was a pervasive and often intense conflict. Ufa fell in June, and Kolchaks armies retreated through Siberia, harassed by partisans. Thousands of perceived opponents of the Bolsheviks were murdered by the Cheka, and life among the peasants was miserable. Answer (1 of 3): Officially it finished in 1922 with fall of last organized Far East holdouts of Whites. Trotskys leadership led the communists to a closer step of succeeding in the civil war. If your specific country is not listed, please select the UK version of the site, as this is best suited to international visitors. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. Study for free with our range of university lectures! from the west, Admiral Kolchak from the east. And even though all the fractions of the Whites agreed on that final goal, they did not agree on practically anything else. Under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin, the Bolsheviks stormed the Winter Palace in the 1917 October Revolution. Soviet Russia adopted its first constitution in July 1918 and fashioned treaties with other republics such as Ukraine. The Whites had lacked coordination, and were plagued by personal rivalries among their leaders. With the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in March 1918, the Bolsheviks became not just traitors to the war but a political threat to democratic-capitalist nations. The Bolsheviks found that this principle applied to themselves after October, when they expected to disengage quickly from World War I. Three days later an army group of ten infantry divisions (including two Ukrainian) and four cavalry brigades was launched against two weak Soviet armies south of the Pripet River. The Red Army eventually battered Wrangels forces, whose rearguards held out long enough to ensure the evacuation of 150,000 soldiers and civilians by sea from Crimea. Peter Anderson compares the tactics and resources of the two sides. During this time the Bolsheviks faced massive opposition to their rule in the form of the White Armies, led by the former officers of the Tsarist state, and also from intervention by the forces of foreign countries. Get Help With Your Essay Bolshevik, (Russian: "One of the Majority") , plural Bolsheviks, or Bolsheviki, member of a wing of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers' Party, which, led by Vladimir Lenin, seized control of the government in Russia (October 1917) and became the dominant political power. They were geographically scattered and separated by vast distances. They responded by allying with the Socialist Revolutionaries and taking over parts of the Trans-Siberian Railway. With starvation and mass unempolyment, the population of Moscow and Petrograd was havled. Copyright 2023 History Today Ltd. Company no. Why Did the Bolsheviks Win the Russian Civil War? - bartleby There are several important reasons for the Bolsheviks success in the Civil War. From February to April 1921 the Red Army invaded and conquered Georgia. That the Whites used similar methods to the Bolsheviks did not help their cause. Even if the White Army managed to control certain regions, for limited periods of time, such as the Ukraine, the Kuban region, Omsk, and Gatchina, and even though it succeeded in winning some battles, such as those at Simbirsk and Kazan, their ultimate fate was defeat. On April 28 the Red Armys counteroffensive began. (Read Leon Trotskys 1926 Britannica essay on Lenin.). Almost without making an effort to attack, they passed ignominiously over the East Prussian border to internment. Crimea In 1920 there was still an organized White force in Crimea, under Gen. Pyotr N. Wrangel, who struck northward at the Red Army and, for a time, occupied part of Ukraine and Kuban. The Bolsheviks nationalised the factories, and introduced military discipline. Second only to Lenin was Trotsky, who as commissar for war not only had supreme command of the armed forces but was also largely responsible for organizing supplies and for the mobilization of manpower. Philips, Steve. Soon after that, other leading tsarist military officials joined that group; those included Kornilov, Denikin, and many others. Several months later, during the October Revolution, communist revolutionaries known as Bolsheviks revolted . If your specific country is not listed, please select the UK version of the site, as this is best suited to international visitors. This gave the Bolshevik armies the supplies they 1. Poland formally annexed Vilnius and the surrounding area in 1922, a claim that was never recognized by Lithuania. According to Lee, the reason of victory laid in the effective handling of the war by the Bolsheviks themselves. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. For example: General Yudenich in the north west and Admiral Kolchak based in Siberia. The last British forces were withdrawn from Arkhangelsk and from Murmansk in the early fall of 1919. By 1920, the Red army of 5 millions was 75% peasant in composition. This ended the Russian Civil War in November 1920. In 1918 alone Cheka killed an estimated 50000 people. Further advance southward was halted when Pisudski learned that, on May 15, 1920, Gen. Mikhayl Tukhachevsky, commander of the Soviet Western Army Group, had attacked across the Dvina. the Bolsheviks by introducing War Communism. He succeeded in doing so, but on July 5 Budenny entered Rovno (now Rivne, Ukraine). http://mars.wnec.edu/~grempel/courses/russia/lectures/28civilwar.html>. Soviet Russia gave way to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.) in 1922, but this did not mean that Russia gave up its hegemony within the new state. Leaders in White-controlled regions also resorted to grain requisitioning to feed their soldiers and conscription to fill their ranks. This site is created and maintained by Alpha History. for the whites. Date published: August 15, 2019 They were a coalition of different enemies of the Bolsheviks (Social There were also significant White forces in Siberia and the east (Kolchak) and in Russias north-west (Yudenich). Omissions? The last of the reasons that led the Bolsheviks to victory is purely economic; they were in control of the most important industrial and manufacturing plants in the country, while the Whites simply had far less and, as mentioned earlier, were dependent on foreign aids and on outside help to keep their campaign alive. St Petersburg, Moscow and Tula. flashcards from Shona Little's The Nelson Thomlinson School class online, or in Brainscape's iPhone or Android app. Furthermore the Cheka was a terror united all the Bolsheviks and made them keen to win the war. The Russians now found themselves in a position to invade Poland. Matters were not helped by the officers reluctance to involve themselves in political matters, leaving chaos and banditry to reign in much of their territory. Buy Online AccessBuy Print & Archive Subscription. Kolchak set up an administration in November at Irkutsk, but it was overthrown in December by Socialist Revolutionaries. Corrections? While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. It drew in many disparate political and military groups, nationalist movements and social classes. This government was in practice fully controlled from Moscow. They also had internal lines of communication that helps them to use the rail and move troops quickly. Copyright 2003 - 2023 - UKEssays is a trading name of Business Bliss Consultants FZE, a company registered in United Arab Emirates. Minsk (now in Belarus) fell to the Russians on July 11, Wilno (now Vilnius, Lithuania) on July 14, and Grodno (now Hrodna, Belarus) on July 19. Enough supplies for the military force creates a huge advantage for the Reds compared to the Whites with a weak arm force. As commissar for nationalities, he sought to ensure that Moscow rule prevailed. There was little in common between the Tsarist groups and socialist groups like the Mensheviks. Here are 10 facts about the Russian Civil War. They used ruthless tactics and propaganda to great effect. Why did the Reds eventually lose to the polish? Their armies were thousands of miles apart, so Trotsky could defeat them one at a time. Resistance continued in Siberia and Central Asia until the mid-1920s. On the other side, the Whites were scattered around the edges from the central. They were well organized, keeping strict control on their resources. From August 1625, the lead units of the Polish Second Army had covered some 200 miles (320 km). In contrast to the whites, the Whites were made up from different groups of people and with different aims, so that makes it impossible to develop political strategy. New bodies of reinforcements were moved forward from depots in western Poland, and depleted units received fresh stores of vital matriel. Gen.Wadysaw Sikorskis Fifth Army in the north was the first to advance. Treadgold, Donald W. Twentieth Century Russia. Registered office: Creative Tower, Fujairah, PO Box 4422, UAE. The author states that the Allied forces were always offering assistance to the Whites, but they stopped it when the Whites needed it the most. Denikin and Kolchak were moderates, who lacked effective political or economic programs. All work is written to order. Geographical position also contributed to the Reds victory in the Russian Civil War. Even after the signing of the armistice in October 1920, the Soviets delayed for over six months in the hopes of gaining more advantageous terms. The Bolsheviks subsequently clashed with the labour force, which understood socialism as industrial self-management. Free resources to assist you with your university studies! Also the weak opponent and all the disadvantages help the Reds to win more easily. Finally, the Bolsheviks had what they New York, NY: Macmillan Reference-Thomson/Gale, 2004. In the southern volunteer army, they could not gain any support of the Don Cossacks in the South, as they were only interested in gaining independence for themselves. Learn faster with spaced repetition. With the development of anti-Bolshevik forces in Siberia, the local soviet feared that Nicholas might be liberated. The Whites, on the other hand, were made up of many opponents of the Reds. 1987. This article was most recently revised and updated by, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Bolshevik, GlobalSecurity.org - Communist Party (Bolsheviks), The History Learning Site - The Bolsheviks. Reasons for the victory of the Reds in the Civil War Corruption was one of the factors; another one was the total dependence on vodka and cocaine among the White soldiers. Here you can choose which regional hub you wish to view, providing you with the most relevant information we have for your specific region.
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