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

4. Civil War (cont.) Why did the Bolsheviks win? Whites
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

5. Soviet Propaganda

6. Soviet Propaganda

7. White propaganda

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

9. 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”

10. 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?

11. 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”

12. 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

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

14. Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

15. 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

16. 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.