Why the Reds won the Civil War

Question 1

Foreign Intervention

Answer 1

• Allied Troops
• £100m worth of supplies
• Japan
• re-establish old Empire - unpopular
• mutiny

Question 2

Russo-Polish War

Answer 2

• 1920 - seized Kiev
• took advantage of chaos
• Russia united against Poland
• Russia surrendered Ukraine

Question 3

Trotsky

Answer 3

• Commissar for war 1918
• discipline / loyalty
• Hierarchy - ex Tsarist officers
• death penalty
• units each political commissar

Question 4

Geography

Answer 4

• Red’s controlled central Russia
• Moscow rail
• armaments in hands of Red’s
• red pop = 70m white pop = 8-9m
• Whites divided ethnically / scattered
• whites no telephone links

Question 5

Unity and Organisation

Answer 5

• reds = unified single command structure
• whites = multitude of groups / aims
• Kolchak (autocrat) questioned by fellow generals
• inability to coordinate
• Don Cossacks - refused to fight with whites further than Don region

Question 6

Leadership

Answer 6

• Lenin in Moscow
• unquestioned authority
• ditched Fins to defend - decisions
• Whites lacked discipline / loyalty / corruption
• Omsk - whites sold foreign equipment on the black market
• whites no political organisation

Question 7

Support

Answer 7

• Peasantry = army MAJ - vested interest - Decree of Land
• Whites = alienation nationalists - in their countries (Ukraine/ Georgia)
• Reds = Workers/ Peasants protect rev gains

Question 8

Propaganda

Answer 8

whites = underestimated / anti-Semitic
- Reds = Whites take peasant land / old order
- Agitprop
- Train / printing press

Question 9

War Communism

Answer 9

• Lenin - Sovnarkom (economy)
• issues = worker committees / inflation/
  shortages (50g ration 1918)
• solutions = grain requisitioning / banning private trade/ nationalisation

Question 10

Labour discipline

Answer 10

• workplace discipline returned
• fined lateness / absenteeism
• internal passports
• piece work rates - bonuses - work books for rations

Question 11

Rationing

Answer 11

• class-based
• prioritised labour force / army
• civil servants / professionals moderate
• Burzhui (middle) = smallest ‘former people’

Question 12

Red Terror

Answer 12

• led by Cheka
• august 1918 - Lenin death attempt
• executions (13,000-300,000)
• countryside
• peasants resisted - 1921 famine