The Russian Civil War: 1917 - 1922

The course is about the Russian Civil Wars 1917-1926 an extremely complicated set of conflicts about a variety of issues including: economics, politics; religion; nationality and nationalism between a variety of factions including the’ Reds’, ‘Whites’, Blacks’, Greens, nationalists (both Russian and from the periphery) and groups of foreign people intervening for external reasons. The Reds were led by Lenin and consisted of Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, some Social Revolutionaries and sometimes the ‘Blacks who were anarchists. The Komuch consisted of right wing Social Revolutionaries, liberals and even some Mensheviks who claimed the authority of the disbanded Provisional Government and Constituent Assembly of 1918. . The Whites included monarchists, authoritarian republicans, Christians some liberals some Cossacks and some peasants. They were split up into different groups around the periphery of the old empire. The Greens were independent peasants played an independent role and were essentially disgruntled peasants sought to avoid domination by any other groups. The Nationalists included conservative Russians who believed in the idea of Greater Russia and the peoples of the peripheral parts of the
empire like the Poles, Finns, Balts, Ukrainians, Bielo- Russians, Caucasians, Tatars, Bashkir and Mongols who wished to achieve political and cultural independence from the Russian empire and its ‘Russianizing’ policies. Lastly the foreigners included British and British empire forces, Americans, Frenchmen, Italians, Japanese, Poles and Czechs. Austro Hungarians and Germans were also involved until the end of 1918. Over ten years these forces fought over the direction in which the Russian state and Empire would develop.