1918 Civil War

Question 1

What were the years of the Civil war?

Answer 1

1918-1920

Question 2

How would war have an impact on how Russia was governed?

Answer 2

Bolshevik control would be further tightened

Question 3

What did Lenin state about Civil war?

Answer 3

‘Who does not know that the world history of all revolutions leads not accidentally but inevitably into civil war.’

Question 4

What type of area did the Bolsheviks control

Answer 4

A small but vital area of the Russia empire (central)

Question 5

In which region was the war sparked

Answer 5

The Czech region.
Czechoslovakian Army of Liberation numbering 45,000 by 1918.
This legion had been given permission by the Bolsheviks to travel eastwards through Siberia to continue to fight the Allies on the Western Front

Question 6

What did the Czech legion do in May?

Answer 6

came across Bolshevik officials who tried to arrest some of the Czech soldiers.
Fighting broke out.
The Czech legion seized the Trans-Siberian railway line through much of western Siberia and parts of easter European Russia.
The Czech legion abandoned their original plan, joined forces with anti-Bolsheviks and began to march westwards towards Moscow.

Question 7

Other anti-Bolshevik forces

Answer 7

• Intervention by European powers and the USA
• Denikin in South Russia
• Kolchak in Siberia
• Yudenich in the north west

Question 8

Intervention by European powers and the USA

Answer 8

• Allies were angry the Russians had surrendered to Germany
• Opposed communism
• Hoped to forced Russia back into WW1
• Angry the Bolsheviks had refused to pay back money borrowed in tsarist times and had nationalised foreign-owned industries

Question 9

Where did Bolsheviks move their capital?

Answer 9

Threats from foreign forces meant they moved their capital from Petrograd to Moscow

Question 10

What happened in July 1918

Answer 10

Tsar and his family were murdered

Question 11

When was the red army set up?

Answer 11

January 1918

Question 12

Who was the red army leader

Answer 12

Trotsky.
Under Trotsky the army became a well-disiplined force
He organised the Red Army along tsarist lines
- 48,000 tsarist officers were drafted in, causing arguments especially between Trotsky and Stalin

Question 13

Who was the red army made up of

Answer 13

Factory workers, peasants and ex-soldiers

Question 14

Why did peasants join the red army?

Answer 14

They did not wish to see a restoration of the old system; they hated landlords more than Bolsheviks.
(Lenin had made seizures of land legal)

Question 15

Who did Trotsky employ to supervise each unit?

Answer 15

180,000 loyal political commissars to supervise each unit.

They indoctrinated soldiers with marxist theories to justify harsh measures of war communism.

Question 16

Where was Trotsky’s HQ

Answer 16

A train carriage.
This enabled him to visit front lines speedily
(he covered 65,000 miles)

Question 17

What area did the Reds command?

Answer 17

The most densely populated areas in central Russia and controlled the hub of the railways in Moscow and armament factories.

Question 18

Whites

Answer 18

No unified command structure, operating independently of each other and were fighting for different objectives
(some officers lived in brothels in a haze of cocaine and vodka)

Question 19

Whites geographically

Answer 19

They were at a disadvantage.

They were scattered around the edges of the central area controlled by the Reds, making coordination difficult.

Question 20

Propaganda

Answer 20

Foreign intervention made propaganda easier for the Reds
(Whites failed to see the value of propaganda)
as this invasion by an outside force portrayed the Whites as unpatriotic

Question 21

When did foreign powers withdraw

Answer 21

When a peace was concluded in the West (1919)

Question 22

1920

Answer 22

By the end of the year most of the former Russian Empire was in the hands of the Communists
- approximately 10 million had died from fighting, hunger and disease.

Question 23

1921

Answer 23

War continued as the Poles invaded Western Ukraine, reaching Kiev.
(Poles= an independent state was created at the Paris Peace conference)

Lenin ordered Marshal Tukhachevsky to counter-attack but he was defeated.

Question 24

March 1921

Answer 24

Treaty of Riga
= Independence of Poland and the Baltic States was confirmed.
Lenin had hoped Tukhachevsky’s initial invasion into Poland would lead to a revolution but this did not occur.