(3) Bolsheviks rule, the civil war and the Red Terror

(3) Bolsheviks rule, the civil war and the Red Terror

1. Civil War - Reds and Whites

   • Inevitablt, Many enermy
   • Lenin Shot three times by a Socialist
   • end of 1918 - enermy of Bolshevik - white want to crush them
   • Three white army marches towards bolshervik territor
   • Who were the red
     • Bolsherviks - aim to keep in control
   • Who were the whites?
     • Liberal, former tsarist, nationalist, separalists, socialist, Revolutionaries, moderate socialists
   • Red controlled
     • Petrograd, Moscow, Tsaritsy (Stalingrad) - industrial town and cities
   • Whites contolled
     • Yandenich in Estonia - go to outskirts of Petrograd turned back by Red Forces
     • Denikin and wrangel in the south - in south attacked Tsaritsyn succedful defenced named Stalingrad
       • 1919 offensive came 340Km of Moscow - Trotsky organised a successful counterattack - white retreat - held out until 1920 when had to be evacuated at the Crimean peninsula by France and Britain
     • Makhno's Insurgent Army Ukraine - Green army fight both sides - supported decentralised control, problem for centralised Bolsheviks - became a regiment in the red army, when war won greens were crushed - Makhno escaped to Romania
     • Kolchak in the east - 140,000 Czech legion - initially successful takening Kazan and Samara by June 1918 - Autumn of 1919 red offensive forced Kolchak it retreat - Captured and shot in 1920
   • Red kepted control due to industrial region and biggest citys and defensive reason
   • Reds Leaders
     • Josephine Starlin, Lenin, Trotsky
   • Leaders Whites
     • General Yandenich, Denikin, Admiral Kolchak, Makhno's
   • Red Methods of control
     • Red Army Conscription May 1918
     • Red Terror
     • Murder of Tsar and his Family 1918 June
     • Rationing of food and resources
   • Whites control
     • Controlled the country side

2. Red control area's

   • Serve food shortages
   • Inflation wiped out grain prices
   • 4/5 of income went on food
   • Red army sent by Lenin takes grain by force - need in the city - as peasant are not sell them

3. Bolsheviks managed to keep control - three main reasons

   • Physical control / Impact
     • Red Terror
       • Main features of the"Red Terror"
         • The bourgeoise were driven from their homes, deprived of food rations and forced to do degrading work
           • Some times indiscriminately shot
         • In August 1918, Lenin ordered the implementation of a ruthless mass terror against the Kulaks, priests and White Guards - conducted by loyal men
         • All suspicious persons were detained in concentration camps.
           • Former officials, landlords and priests were executed and whole families wiped out for no reason other than being once rich
         • Peasants who resisted the requisitioning of their crops were punished, often by shooting
         • Industrial unrest was similary crushed
         • In many cases the class, educational experience and profession of the arrested person was sufficient to determine the fate of the accused
         • Murder of the ex-tsar family was a key decision of the "Red Terror"
           • Summer of 1918, units of the Czech Legion closed in on Ekaterinburg, their place of confinement
           • If Tsar captured become white rally
           • Took action into there own hand (no direct instruction from Moscow). Midnight 16 July 1918, Royal family was shot - attempt to disguise their remains
           • No code of laws, even revolutionary Justice, could admit the "execution" of the former tsar's physician, cook, chambermaid and waiter - Later Trotsky commented that "under judical procedures, of couse, execution of the family would have been impossible"
     • War Communism
       • peoples response to War Communism
         • Trotsky used the Cheka to establish control and ensure the loyalty of the people
         • Russia found that they either had to be for or aginst one side or the other
           • largely determined by which side controlled your area
         • Hostages were taken and there were mass executions and other outrages by both the Reds and Whites
           • Red used indiscriminate murder and wholesale atrocities
         • Peasant reluctant to give up grain - requisition proved difficult
           • Village would sized the weapons of the armed forced sent to take the grain
     • Control over Army
       • The Petrograd sailors revolt was put with forces with the help from a near by military batalion
   • Economic Control / Impact
     • War Communism
       • Polices adopted to maintain the red Army - Nationalisation of all production and distribution in red areas
       • Main features of War Communism
         • All factories and business were nationisled in November 1920 - gear for war. Workers worked long hours without wages - rewards was a meagre ration of food some clothing and lodgings
         • Soliders went into the villages and confiscated crops and livestock. Measures were very unpopular and, as the peasants grew less had to hide food - food shortages worse - back his measures with the CHEKA - strikes were considered acts of treason
         • There was a ban on private trade and rationing system was intro
         • Money lost all value - system of bartering instead.
       • Effects of war Communism
         • War Communism involved ruthless treatment of the peasants
           • Not worth growing food for the Communist to steal and reduced their sowings - acute food shortages 1920 famine 1921
         • 7.5 million and 10 million Russian died during the Civil War most civilances
           • Hunger, Disease, typhus - main culprits caused by the constant movement of lousy troops, lack of soap and hot water, combined with malnutrition
         • Commissarist of Supplies responsibel for feeding the army and cities - exact grain from the Kulaks. Requisition upset the partership of proletariat
         • Townspeople fled to the country - more food in countryside
           • Dember 1920 the pop of 40 capitals had fallen by 33% compared with 1917 - Petrograd 57.5% and Moscow 44.5%
           • Black market grew
         • Industrial output fell - strikes increased - Petrograd naval base sailors strikes, blow to the regime as original supporters of October Revolution
   • Social Control / Impact
     • Control over the army
       • Having charismatic Leaders
         • When Trotsky can on his armared train to a particular front the moral of the Red solider would be lifted
         • Lenin was a man of considerable personal and organisational skills
       • The fact that they had won the Civil War meant that the Red Soliders would trusted the Bolsheviks judgment
       • The Red Army were united with the same ideologies as there leaders
   • Political Control / Impact
     • Red Terror
       • Events leading to the outbreak
         • On 30 August 1918, after speaking at a labour rally in Moscow, Lenin was shot and seriously wounded by Fanya Kaplan
           • Claimed he was a traitor to the revolution
           • She was executed three days later
         • Petrograd Cheka was murdered on same day as assassination attempt