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Civil War, 1918-1921

Civil War, 1918-1921. Bolsheviks overthrew Provisional Government Most applauded All-Socialist Coalition Government Lenin refused January 1918: Constituent Assembly March 1918: Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Civil War (cont.). Reds (pro-Bolshevik troops)

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Civil War, 1918-1921

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  1. Civil War, 1918-1921 • Bolsheviks overthrew Provisional Government • Most applauded • All-Socialist Coalition Government • Lenin refused • January 1918: Constituent Assembly • March 1918: Treaty of Brest-Litovsk

  2. Civil War (cont.) • Reds (pro-Bolshevik troops) • Whites (anti-Bolsheviks from SRs to Army officers) • Greens (peasant insurgents) • Nationalists • Western Allies

  3. Civil War (cont.) Why did the Bolsheviks win? • Strategic, industrial center • Red Army (Trotsky) • Peasants’ conditional support • Whites • on periphery • lacked unity • refused to cooperate with nationalists • Finnish Regent Mannheim’s offer (summer 1919) • Moderate land policy • Underestimated Bolsheviks

  4. Civil War (cont.) • Nationalists • on periphery • lacked unity • popular support • Peasants • poorly organized • local concerns • When forced to choose, supported Reds as “lesser evil” • “Soviet Power” (local power)

  5. Consequences of Russian Revolutions • First “communist” country • Not world revolution, but “socialism in one country” • Oct. 1920: end of Polish-Soviet War • Inspired many socialists • Increased fear in many others: “Red Scare”

  6. Consequences of Russian Revolutions • Civil war’s devastation: • Death: 7 million killed; 5 million starved (compared to 1.7 million in WWI) • De-urbanization • Many transients • barter economy • Black market culture re-emerged. • Destroyed industry and infrastructure: industrial production less than 30% of pre-war levels. • Sown land greatly decreased. • 1-2 million emigrated, mostly of upper and middle classes

  7. Consequences of Russian Revolutions • Second civil war • “War Communism” • Grain requisitions • communization • Forced labor • Forced recruitment • Control of trade • Workers not allowed to strike • Food rationing • Printing money?

  8. Consequences of Russian Revolutions • Second civil war: • “Defeat in Victory” (Isaac Deutscher) • Peasants resisted: • Green movement in Eastern Ukraine • Makhnovshchina • Antonovshchina • Cheka • “Detachments of special assignment” • Workers’ strikes: Petrograd, Moscow, Saratov, Kharkiv • Kronstadt sailors’ revolt, 1-7 March 1921: “Soviets without communists”

  9. 10th Congress of RKP(b)8-16 March 1921 • Lenin: “You all, of course, know perfectly well which sum of events, particularly owing to the extreme aggravation of poverty, provoked by the war, ruin, demobilization and crop failure, which sum of circumstances have made the peasantry’s situation especially difficult, critical, and have unavoidably strengthened its alienation from the proletariat to the bourgeoisie.” • New Economic Policy (NEP): retreat or “time out” • Prodnalog • Allowed small free enterprise • Internal trade

  10. Consequences of Russian Revolutions • Non-Russian peasant revolts convinced Lenin of power of nationalism • Affirmative Action Empire • Korenizatsiia - indigenization • National communism

  11. Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

  12. Consequences of Russian Revolutions (contd.) • Instilled in many leading Bolsheviks the importance of violence to “the struggle.” • Many of Stalin’s supporters joined the party during the civil war. • Also inspired many idealists, such as Evgeniia Ginzburg and Mirsaid Sultan-Galiev.

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