The Russian Civil War: Reds, Whites, and Revolutionary Terror

The Russian Civil War (1917/1918-1922) pitted the Bolshevik "Reds" against a heterogeneous coalition of counterrevolutionary "Whites," including monarchists, liberals, and former imperial officers, united mainly by opposition to Bolshevism. The main White fronts were led by Admiral Alexander Kolchak in Siberia, General Anton Denikin in southern Russia, and General Nikolai Yudenich near Petrograd, with Baron Pyotr Wrangel later commanding the remnants of the southern army until its evacuation from Crimea in November 1920. Allied powers intervened militarily in support of the Whites, and the Czechoslovak Legion's 1918 rebellion along the Trans-Siberian Railway proved significant, but the Bolsheviks' control of Russia's central industrial core gave them decisive advantages over the geographically scattered Whites; the related Polish-Soviet War ended with the Treaty of Riga (1921), and the war's total human cost, including famine and repression, is estimated at several million deaths.