The Russian Revolution and Civil War

Attack from the Left: The Bolshevik
Revolution
 Just as we had the ‘Attack from the Right’ in August
1917 with the Kornilov Revolt, in October we have
the ‘Attack from the Left’
 Unlike the Kornilov Revolt the Bolshevik revolution
is successful and makes way for over 70 years of
Soviet rule
 However, first the Bolsheviks have to win the Civil
War and defeat ‘atamans’ like Baron Ungern….
Vladimir Il’ich Lenin (Vladimir Ulianov)
1870-1924
What is to be Done (1902)
 Introduced the idea of the Vanguard Party
 The workers cannot achieve full socialist
consciousness spontaneously: they will only achieve
‘trade union’ consciousness
 They must be led to Marxism by a core party of
dedicated revolutionaries
 The Social-Democrats (later the Bolsheviks)
represent the ‘revolutionary socialist intellectuals’
who can achieve this guidance
Bolsheviks

Bolshevik Party founded in 1903,
after a split within the Russian
Social Democrats

Bolshevik means ‘majority’ (as
opposed to Menshevik =
minority) although this was a
misnomer because there were
originally more Mensheviks

However by mid-1917 the
Bolsheviks had become a mass
party, which even Lenin appeared
to lose control over during the July
Days
Reminder: Dual Power
 After the Tsar’s abdication, power is shared between the
Provisional Government and the Petrograd Soviet
 Provisional government formed by Duma deputies,
mostly from the liberal Kadet paert
 Petrograd Soviet was the worker’s council formed by
striking workers on the street, led by Social Democrats
 Provisional Government and Petrograd Soviet clashed
often; sources of authority and power were very
confused
Growing Militancy at a Popular Level
 Over the course of 1917 we see growing radicalism
and militancy in the working class in Petrograd and
Moscow, and amongst the soldiers and sailors
 At the same time, from May 1917 we see popular
uprisings in the countryside, with manor houses
sacked and burned and land claimed by peasants
 Sets the scene for the July Days – a popular uprising
in Petrograd ostensibly held in support of
Bolsheviks, although Bolsheviks actually had
little/no control over the crowd
Military Fires on Workers During July Days
All Power to the Soviets!
 After the failed Kornilov Revolt the moderates lost
authority, and the Bolsheviks gain even more
control in the Soviet and workers’ councils
To the Finland Station (again)
 September 1917 Lenin writes from exile to call for
an armed uprising against the Provisional
Government
 Returned in secret to Russia in early October,
issuing angry exhortations to Bolsheviks to seize the
moment
 Actual uprising largely managed by Leon Trotsky,
former Menshevik turned Bolshevik and leader of
the Bolshevik faction in the Petrograd Soviet
Leon Trotsky (Lev Bronshtein) 1879-1940
October 24-25 1917
 Bolshevik-run Petrograd Soviet Military-
Revolutionary Committee starts to quietly take
control of the telegraph offices and railway stations
 Set up roadblocks on city’s bridges and began to
surround Winter Palace
 On afternoon of October 25 they stormed the
Winter Palace where the Provisional Government
was hiding – met with very little resistance
All Power to the Soviets! (II)

Lenin et al called for power to be seized by Soviets, which they
essentially effected on 24-25 October

Bolsheviks were dominant power in the Soviets but not the
Majority

Formed the Council of People’s Commissars as an interim
executive wing of government before elections

Elections in November 1917 resulted in a majority held by the
Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs) – the party of the peasants.

Accordingly Bolsheviks dispersed the Constituent Assembly
(on basis that they had support of armed working class and
many soldiers) and declared a workers’ state
The Civil War (1918-1921)

Trotsky becomes
People's Commissar of
War and begins to
organize the Red Army:
4 March 1918

The Height of Civil
War: Autumn 1918November 1919

Failed Invasion of
Poland (‘World
Revolution’): 1920
Treaty of Versailles and the Paris Peace
Conference

Paris Peace conference of 1919 hammered out the terms of
the German surrender after WWI

Part of these terms was the insistence of the notion of
‘national self-determination’ – part of Woodrow Wilson’s ‘14
Points’

This policy insisted that the oppressed nationalities of the
former German, Austrian and Russian empires deserved
national states

Resulted in formation of independent Poland, as well as
Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia

Soviets recognised independent Poland grudgingly
Political Centralization and Terror
 Formation of the Cheka: 7 (20) December 1917

First and Last Session of the Constituent
Assembly: 5 (18) January 1918

Left SR Rebellion: July 1918

Murder of Nicholas II and his family: July 1918

Assassination Attempt on Lenin followed by
Launch of Red Terror: September 1918
Revolutionary Ideology

Role of Ideology: theories of class and class war;
hierarchy of worker over peasant; the ‘kulak’
Vanguard Party
 The Storming of the Winter Palace spectacle in
1920:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLihunxEzwE
Reds vs. Whites
El Lissitzky, ‘Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge!’,
1919
From Brest-Litovsk to Civil War

From the start of the revolution the Bolsheviks knew they would face an
armed fight

Key issue was that they did not have the support of the whole army

Situation became even more complicated after they signed peace with
Germany, Austria-Hungary and Ottoman empire on very bad terms in March
1918 (lost Baltic states, Kars oblast, and recognised independent Ukraine)

They were heavily supported by the armies at the Front in the Northwest.
Less so by the armies in the Southwest, which became the first focus of the
White (royalist) forces.

Officers of old Russian army gathered forces in the south in the Don and
Kuban regions, while Admiral Kolchak was establishing an anti-Soviet
government in Siberia
‘Bewildering Patchwork of Zones and
Sovereignties’
 For most of Civil War, the ‘Red/White’ split was divided
into a Red center (Russia’s industrial heartland including
Moscow and Petrograd) and a White periphery (Siberia,
Ukraine, Southern Russia, Turkestan)
 Sovereignty was contested and unclear, and the power
vacuum that frequently resulted from this ambiguity left
room for figures like Ungern to engage in radical
experiments with statehood
 ‘Most important thing about the Empire’s collapse was
that it unfolded differently in different places’
(Sunderland)
Aleksandr Kolchak (1874-1920)
Kto kogo (Who Will Beat Whom)?
 Whites had initial successes at driving back Bolsheviks in 1918,
helped by foreign intervention in the far North
 But they were hampered by internal divisions – there was no one
‘White army’ but several in Siberia, the South-west, and the north
 At the same time, anarchist/peasant armies were fighting both
Whites and Reds in Ukraine (the Makhnovshchina)
 Both Red and White armies conscripted peasants, and both had
problems with desertions, but the Whites’ problems were greater
(i.e. peasants more inclined to be sympathetic to the Bolsheviks)
1921 – Victory of the Dictatorship of the
Proletariat
Boris Kustodiev, ‘Bolshevik’, 1920