Behind the Front Lines of the Civil War

Countering the myth that the civil war in Russia was largely between the "whites" and the "reds", this study views the struggle as a multifaceted social and political process. It focuses on the interaction of state institutions, political parties and social movements.

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Countering the powerful myth that the civil war in Russia was largely between the "whites" and the "reds", this study views the struggle as a multifaceted social and political process. It focuses not so much on armies and governments as on the interaction of state institutions, political parties and social movements, exposing the weaknesses of the various warring factions in a Russia plagued by strikes, mutinies, desertion and rebellions. The Whites benefited from popular resistance to the Reds, and the Reds, from resistance to the Whites. In the author's view, neither regime enjoyed popular support. Pacification campaigns, mass shooting, deportations, artillery shelling of villages and terror were the essence of the conflict, and when the Whites were defeated, the war against the Greens, the peasant rebels, went on. Drawing on an array of sources, Brovkin convicts the early Bolsheviks of crimes similar to those later committed by Stalin. What emerges is a picture of how diverse forces - Cossacks, Ukrainians, Greens, Mensheviks and SRs, as well as Whites and Bolsheviks - created the tragic victory of a party that had no majority support.
This book has important contemporary implications as the world again asks an old question: can Russian statehood prevail over local, regional, and national identities?