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Reasons for the Bolshevik victory in the Russian CiIvil War - Coggle…
Reasons for the Bolshevik victory in the Russian CiIvil War
Bolsheviks
as provisional goevrnment grew weaker the Bolshevik support increased
terror and coercion, e.g. Cheka established in December 1917 (to eliminate political opposition)
Red Terror extended throughout teh country as civil war tensions intensified because of the White Terror and foreign intervention. All remaining SRs and Mensheviks were branded traitors and some shot... onslaught against "class enemies"
Much of what happened in the civil war can be seen as the product of the Bolshevik "idealism"? that accompanied their seizure of power => class conflict inherent in Bolshevism from teh beginning
Sheila Fitzpatrick highlights that the coercion of teh peasants in teh civil war was necessary for the development of communism and led directly to the collectivization of the 1930s. (totalitarian tendencies beginning from Lenin and his purges of oppositon and establishment of Cheka)
Lenin's "image" that provided a focus for internal stability through the difficult years of civil war
However the Brest Litovsk negotiated by Lenin drove them into the Civil War in the first place (harsh peace terms, Russia e.g. lost 1/6 of its population)
The Bolsheviks had managed a fairly steady position by the time of the civil war. Though harsh policies like War Communism created displeasement, the Bolsheviks could control the population
effective use of propaganda to also maintain morale among the troops
Trotsky has often been credited by Western historians for the success of teh Red armies (e.g. Martin Sixsmith & Robert Service)
Soviets have tried to wipe out him out of history after Stalin assumed the leadership
provisional government
the lower classes were alienated from the government
most people and especially peasants did not want continuation of the WW1, but the government was not doing anything about it
issue of land distribution was significant, teh government did not provide any solution to it => Lenin did: "bread, peace and land" (April thesis)
the government just claimed that in the wartime conditions it would be impossible to organise elections (the peasants thought maybe something could be done to the land distribution when a new constituional assembly would be elected => but the government also missed this opportunity
many workers did not held the provisional government even legitimate
workers were dissappointed to find that nothing seemed to improve after the end of the Tsardom
.
disunity of whites
Whites also lost the foreign support as their interests faded along the end of the WW1
no single political programme
no unified government
they could have taken advantage of the Bolshevik's failure to win over the rural community. Instead, they treated peasants with contempt... => Peasants came to realise that only a Bolshevik victory would enable them to retain teh lands they had taken
Orlando Figes has shown in his study, that the Reds found it easier than the Whites to recruit peasants (significant as majority of people were peasants) The communists set up elected councils to provide peasant representation of cillage in dealing with the central government => at least helped to maintain the illusion that Bolsheviks wanted to respond to peasants' needs
became infamous for the terror they brought => e.g. if resistance, entire villages were burnt down
Strategic position in Petrograd. Troops in accessable positions.
The Czech legion case?
Many peasants fought for the greens without a united purpose
Inconsistency of the whites
controlled Russia's major armament factories at Tula and Petrograd, and the old tsarist arsenals