6. Russian Civil War 1917-1922
The geographic territory of the Russian Empire was massive and included numerous ethnic groups. After the Russian Revolution, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland became sovereign states. The remaining territory that included Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, South Caucasus, Central Asia, and Mongolia became the site of a horrific civil war to determine which faction would control the new country.
The Russian Civil War is generally divided into three phases. Phase one is the Revolution to the December 1917 Armistice; phase two is January to November 1919, and phase three is the siege of the White forces in the Crimea. There were many participants during the three phases, but the most powerful was the Red Army and the White Army.
The Red Army was aligned with Bolshevik socialism and led by Vladimir Lenin. The Reds implemented mandatory conscription and those that refused were taken hostage and shot to ensure loyalty. The White Army, or White Movement, was comprised of defenders of the monarch, landowners, middle classes, and anti-Bolshevik socialists. From November 1917 to its official end of June 1923, the Red and White Armies fought each other with catastrophic outcomes. Hundreds of thousands were killed during the Red Terror led by Lenin and the responding White Terror. Mass graves of the murdered lined the Russian countryside.
The Red Army was victorious and created the Soviet Union; however, the new country lay in ruins. Both armies had murdered millions of people including the extermination of Jews in south Russia and Ukraine. The Russian economy was decimated with only a fraction of land farmed. What crops did exist were damaged by successive droughts which led to famine and mass starvation. Buildings were collapsing, infrastructure was destroyed, and the cotton and iron industries were at a standstill. Over 7 million children were left homeless and orphaned and lived on the streets throughout the Soviet Union.