Russian Civil War

After the Bolsheviks seized power in Petrograd in late 1917, the former Russian Empire was torn apart by five years of war between the Bolsheviks' Red Army, the anti-communist White movement, national independence movements, peasant and anarchist forces and foreign interventions. The Bolsheviks won, and in 1922 founded the Soviet Union on most of the old empire's territory. An estimated 7 to 12 million people died, most of them civilians.

The Russian Revolution began with the abdication of Nicholas II in February 1917. The Provisional Government that replaced him failed to end Russia's part in World War I, and in October the Bolsheviks under Vladimir Lenin overthrew it. They lost the elections to a Constituent Assembly, which they dissolved in January 1918. In March 1918 they accepted the harsh Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany, giving up huge western territories and alienating many former allies on the left.

The Reds' main opponents were the Whites, a loose coalition led mostly by conservative officers of the old army, from liberals to monarchists, whose rallying cry was a "united and indivisible Russia". Socialist opponents of the Bolsheviks, anarchists such as Nestor Makhno in Ukraine and peasant "green" armies fought at different times against both. Leon Trotsky built the Red Army from early 1918, relying on conscription, former tsarist officers watched by political commissars and harsh discipline. Britain, France, Japan and other powers sent troops and supplies, initially to keep Russia in the war against Germany.

Full-scale war broke out in May and June 1918, when the Czechoslovak Legion, strung out along the Trans-Siberian Railway, revolted and helped anti-Bolshevik governments take power along the Volga and in Siberia. In July the former tsar and his family were murdered in Yekaterinburg. After an attempt on Lenin's life in August, the Bolsheviks launched the Red Terror against their opponents. In November 1918 Admiral Alexander Kolchak seized power in Omsk and was proclaimed Supreme Ruler, while in the south General Anton Denikin led the Volunteer Army.

In 1919 the Whites attacked from three directions: Kolchak from the east in March, Denikin from the south in summer and General Nikolai Yudenich towards Petrograd in the autumn. Denikin's forces took Kursk and, on 14 October, Orel, the closest they came to Moscow. But the Whites were overstretched, divided and unpopular with many peasants and national minorities. The Reds, now larger, threw back Kolchak, took Omsk in November and drove Denikin south in disarray.

Kolchak was handed over to his enemies and shot in February 1920. Denikin's army was evacuated from Novorossiysk to Crimea, where General Pyotr Wrangel took command. After a failed offensive, Wrangel and his remaining forces sailed for Constantinople in November 1920. Meanwhile a war with Poland ended in the Peace of Riga of March 1921, which divided Belarus and Ukraine. Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania kept their independence, but Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia were occupied by the Red Army. Vladivostok fell on 25 October 1922, and the last White stronghold surrendered in June 1923. Resistance by the Basmachi in Central Asia continued for years longer.

Both sides committed atrocities. Estimates of Red Terror executions vary enormously, with many historians suggesting about 100,000; the White Terror is estimated to have killed about 300,000, and around 100,000 Jews were killed in pogroms in Ukraine. Typhus killed perhaps 3 million. The Bolsheviks' forced grain requisitions, together with drought, contributed to the famine of 1921–22, which killed roughly 5 million people. Peasant risings and the Kronstadt naval mutiny of March 1921 were crushed. Between one and two million White émigrés left Russia, and by 1921 heavy industry was producing only a fifth of its pre-war output.

Our 1914 map shows the Russian Empire before the revolution, and the 1920 map shows the former empire in the middle of the civil war, with new states along its western edge.