display

When Polish troops marched into the Ukrainian metropolis of Kiev in May 1920, the residents' reaction was restrained, almost indifferent. After all, it was the eleventh time since 1918 that the occupation forces changed in the city. And it wasn't to be the last invasion. In the civil war that broke out after the Bolsheviks came to power in Russia in 1918, there were no fronts in the traditional sense. Armed men of various origins roamed the country and harassed a population that had lost all order structures.

The Russian Civil War has therefore also been described as a laboratory of unlimited violence, in which revolution, terror, raids, peasant uprisings, epidemics and famine claimed up to 25 million victims. When other sources speak of around ten million deaths, that says something about the source situation, which in turn reflects the general chaos of those years.

The Viennese historian Hannes Leidinger dedicated a focus to this diffuse “conglomerate of conflicts” in his new book “The Russian Civil War 1917–1922”: “Corpses lying around on the streets soon no longer bothered anyone.

Nor was it shocked by murders, sometimes committed for the slightest cause.

A human life counted next to nothing. ”The number of victims quickly exceeded that of the First World War, in which the tsarist empire had suffered around 1.4 million deaths before the fall of Nicholas II.

The Russian Revolutions of 1917

The February Revolution of 1917 overthrew the Tsarist regime.

But the new leadership could not bring itself to peace and comprehensive reforms.

That offered the Bolsheviks the chance for a coup.

Source: The World

display

The civil war is commonly divided into three phases. After the Central Powers occupied large areas as far as the Caucasus after the armistice in 1917, the Whites, as the opponents of the Reds are commonly called, were able to gather there. In the second phase from 1919, Entente units took over the role that the German and Austrian troops had played until the end of 1918. But the advance of the white generals like Alexander Kolchak or Anton Denikin failed not least because they saw themselves as competitors and presented their offensives in an uncoordinated manner, so that the Red Army, organized by Leon Trotsky, could repel them one by one.

From 1920 the Red Army finally went on the offensive on all fronts. It was true that it suffered a heavy defeat against Poland, whose armies had invaded Belarus and the Ukraine, in August 1920 near Warsaw. But by 1924 the Soviet power succeeded in regaining - in a very bloody way - all areas that had once belonged to the tsarist empire, with the exception of Finland, Poland and the Baltic states.

Leidinger questions the concept of "civil war", after all, it was not just different factions of a community that fought, but also nationalities, foreign powers and classes in the sense of Bolshevik ideology.

So it was not just military campaigns by regular armies that shaped this conflict.

“Ultimately, many parties, nationalities, denominations and social groups became radicalized,” writes Leidinger.

"Old and new enemy images, world interpretations filled with contempt, hateful revanchism, extreme political programs, inhuman ideals and ruthless strategies for their implementation contributed to the dissolution of the boundaries of violence."

display

These ideas and emotions exploded in a country whose industrial production in 1920 had fallen to 20 percent of the pre-war level of 1914.

Marauding troops or gangs destroyed the harvests, so that the supply of food collapsed, which was traded on the black market at exorbitant prices or only in exchange.

Because inflation ate up wages and wealth.

Red Army soldiers near Kazan

Source: picture-alliance / RIA Novosti

The social infrastructure in the cities collapsed completely. Water pipes burst, backyards became toilets, vermin multiplied explosively. Between 1918 and 1920 the population of Moscow fell by 50, that of Petrograd (today: St. Petersburg) even by 75 percent. But there was no salvation in the country either. In the province of Samara alone, two million people struggled with death from starvation or illness in autumn 1921.

Leidinger rejects the frequently cited theses of the "brutalization of the Russians", which was a result of the latent imperial crisis since the end of the 19th century.

Rather, ethnic and denominational antagonisms erupted in bloody excesses on the periphery of the country.

The historian sees the causes of the increased aggression in the generally raging struggle for existence, "which in the midst of a far-reaching state collapse left little space for prevailing notions of order."

Starving family on the Volga in 1921

Source: Getty Images

display

A war "all against all" was the result, in which the boundaries to general lawlessness dissolved. "Gang beings, rebel groups and the power of the warlords are excesses of this anarchy", which, however, also allowed traditional patterns of violence to escalate. The deeply rooted anti-Semitism in the cities and in the countryside resulted in numerous pogroms.

The fact that the Bolsheviks emerged victorious from this spiral of violence is not only explained by the incompetence of their white or nationalist opponents.

Founded in January 1918, the Red Army had 1.5 million men in 1919 and five million in 1920.

Trotsky displayed a remarkable ability to learn, not only relying on the correct revolutionary awareness of the troops, but also employed almost 50,000 officers and 215,000 non-commissioned officers in the tsarist army.

Do you want to hear history too?

"Assassin" is the first season of the WELT History Podcast.

The election of officers, a relic of the revolution, was abolished. Discipline enforced with brutal severity. Mutineers were shot dead. At the same time, commissioners provided ideological training for the army, which also turned it into a huge educational institution. The Bolsheviks also had the advantage of the internal line. While their opponents attacked from the sparsely populated periphery, they retained access to Russia's economic and demographic resources and were able to use the railroad to move large units in a relatively short time.

Above all acts of violence, Lenin's regime stood at least for the promise of a new order with land reform and national self-determination, while the white generals represented the ruined regime of the tsarist autocracy and had also entered into a pact with foreign powers against their own nation. The Cheka, founded at the end of 1917, acted on sheer terror against those who think differently, and by 1921 already had 137,000 employees.

The red secret police set new standards in terms of brutality.

Mass shootings were still the simplest exercise in their repertoire.

Prisoners' arms and legs were sawed off, skulls were smashed with leather straps, cages full of rats attached to the bodies of the tortured were heated so that the animals looking for an escape route had to eat their way through the intestines of the victims.

Others were doused with water in winter so that they would freeze to ice, writes Leidinger.

With this, the Cheka tested the repertoire with which it was supposed to provide the steel corset for the totalitarian state of Josef Stalin.

display

Hannes Leidinger: "The Russian Civil War 1917–1922".

(Reclam, Ditzingen. 159 p., 14.95 euros)

You can also find “World History” on Facebook.

We look forward to a like.