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By the middle of 1918, the lands of the former Russian Empire were locked in a brutal civil war. The revolutionary Bolsheviks controlled the Russian heartland and most cities, the counter-revolutionary White movement survived in the south and pockets in the east, while a fragile democratic rival state on the Volga survived with the protection of the Czechoslovak Legion. Across Siberia, regional power struggles opposed democrats, White generals, Cossack warlords, and weak local statelets. The Germans and Austro-Hungarians occupied the Baltics,
Russian Poland, and semi-autonomous Ukraine - and the Allies had landed a small force at the port of Murmansk. The stage was set for even more chaos, and a larger Allied intervention. Initially, the small British detachment of a few hundred men at Murmansk was to prevent the Germans from taking weapons and supplies meant for Russia after the March 1918 separate peace between Russia and Germany. As the civil war in Russia spiraled, the debate in Allied capitals about what to do heated up. Some Allied leaders at first considered working with the Bolsheviks to keep them in the war. Others,
like Winston Churchill or General Ferdinand Foch, wanted to overthrow them. Still others, like British Prime Minister David Lloyd George and President Woodrow Wilson, were reluctant but didn't rule out a limited intervention. Still others opposed any intervention, like US Secretary of War Newton Baker and British politician Hastings Lees-Smith: "If we are going to restore order and organisation into Russia behind Japanese bayonets, if we are going to take part in a civil war in that country, if we are going to bring back Kerensky or the Cadets, or Korniloff -or the Czar, behind the arms of an Asiatic Power, then we might as well tear up
every democratic profession with which we entered the War, and it will mean the moral bankruptcy of the Alliance." [Hastings Lee-Smith] (Hansard) Nonetheless, the perceived betrayal of a separate peace with Germany and fear of chaos in Russia giving an advantage to the Germans led the Allies to expand their intervention from summer 1918. British, French, American, Japanese, and other Allied troops reinforced Murmansk, and landed at Archangelsk, Baku, and Vladivostok. The Americans insisted the mission be limited to guarding ports, but their troops also participated in
the now-common skirmishes with Bolshevik forces. The Allies, though, did not have enough troops to mount a serious campaign from bases so far from Petrograd and Moscow. Morale was low, and tensions in the multi-national force were high. One US soldier bitterly complained about the British: "We are getting dirty stunts pulled on us by the low down English…the Russians have no use for the English. I haven't seen anybody yet that did." (Crownover 41-42) Despite the few Allied troops and the disagreements about even these small forces, Lenin (and many future Soviet and Russian historians) saw a clear danger: "What we are involved in is a systematic, methodical,
and evidently long-planned military and financial counterrevolutionary campaign against the Soviet Republic, which all the representatives of Anglo-French imperialism have been preparing for months." (Mawdsley 53) The Allies now began to support the Whites directly with military advisors, weapons, and supplies - even though relations between them were also strained. The Germans and Bolsheviks solidified their relations with an economic deal in August, though the Germans gave some help to the Whites as well. Some historians even argue the Germans could have toppled the Bolsheviks at this stage if they had decided to.
So the half-hearted Allied intervention grew in 1918 as the Germans focused on the war in western Europe. The White and Red armies were the decisive forces, and they traded victories and defeats across the country. The Whites' Volunteer Army and the Don Cossacks saw their fortunes change in May 1918 thanks to the German occupation of Ukraine and Rostov. With fresh reinforcements from the former Romanian front, White forces retook the Don and much of Kuban, with the help of local Cossacks. Later in the year, they continued their advance against the more numerous but poorly-led Red Army,
capturing the rest of the Kuban and much of the North Caucasus by early 1919. Trotsky summed up the disaster: "A swollen army, really a horde rather than an army, has clashed with Denikin's properly-organized troops and in a few weeks has been reduced to dust." (Mawdsley 162) Some argue Denikin's turn to the south was a mistake, as he could have linked up with the Komuch instead, potentially uniting the anti-Bolshevik forces. Meanwhile from summer 1918 the Don Cossacks under Ataman Krasnov launched a major offensive towards the city of Tsaritsyn on the Volga, hoping to link up with the Komuch. But they overstretched
themselves and failed to take the city despite attacking it three times between July 1918 and January 1919. The Red Army then launched a counteroffensive and pushed the Whites back, a victory for which Bolshevik Joseph Stalin later took credit. They then implemented a policy of de-cossackisation in the Don Region, a form of Red Terror meant to crush Cossack identity and autonomy. This defeat led the surviving Cossack and White troops to unify as the Armed Forces of South Russia under White general Anton Denikin, following the death of White founder Mikhail Alekseev. As the fighting in the south went back and forth, so did the fighting beyond the Volga, with fateful consequences for Russia's last gasp at democracy.
Fall 1918 also saw a reinforced Red Army take the offensive in the Volga region against the pro-democracy Komuch and the Czechoslovak Legion. To free up enough troops, Moscow transferred troops from the West freed by the peace deal with Germany. The Komuch People's Army under VA Kappel was still weak, and the Legion was suffering from low morale, as its soldiers longed to go home or sympathized with the Bolsheviks. As one Czech officer put it: "The Czech army is like a well-bred young girl who has been locked up in a brothel. She suffers there, and is contaminated." (Mawdlsey 68) [Czech Officer] These factors help explain why the Komuch did not help the anti-Bolshevik workers' uprising
in Izhevsk, which the Bolsheviks crushed. With the elite Latvian Riflemen in the lead, Bolshevik forces launched an offensive, taking Kazan, Simbirsk, and Samara in September and October. The Legion's counteroffensive failed, and the remnants of the now dissolved Komuch pulled back into the Urals region. The Legion now focused on trying to get home via Vladivostok. The Red Army had shown it was improving as well as growing in numbers, and the campaign also brought a political victory. The dispirited democratic politicians now took a fateful decision: they appointed White Admiral Alexander Kolchak head of a new anti-Bolshevik
government, the Directory. In November 1918, Kolchak overthrew it in a coup and became Supreme Leader of all anti-Bolshevik forces. The Komuch had failed to get enough support amongst the peasants, and could not defend itself. This was the end of the democratic counter-revolution and the consolidation of the main anti-Bolshevik movement under the Whites, as Denikin reluctantly accepted Kolchak's leadership for the sake of unity. The Allies agreed to support Kolchak, who also struck an uneasy alliance with Cossack Ataman Grigori Semenov, who operated in the Far East against the Bolsheviks but also as a lawless
warlord. Kolchak's forces were badly trained, and he lacked support from the peasants in the regions he controlled from his base at Omsk. He also had little control east of Lake Baikal, which meant his supply line from the Pacific was vulnerable to the chaos there. Still, he wanted to show results to gain Allied recognition, so he launched an offensive in December, which captured the city of Perm. He desperately needed more resources, rail hubs, factories, and people though, so he then pushed on towards the Volga river in March. After initial success,
the White armies outran their supply lines and the Bolsheviks rushed in reinforcements. The Volga remained out of reach. White officers themselves knew their position was fragile: "Don't think that our successful advances are a result of military prowess, for it is all much simpler than that - when they run away we advance; when we run away they will advance." (Smele 114) So Kolchak now led the Whites and had gained some ground in the Urals and Volga regions. The Bolsheviks, meanwhile, still controlled the Russian heartland - by any means necessary. As the fighting raged on multiple fronts, the civilian population of the former
Russian Empire suffered, regardless of who ruled in a given region. Poverty, disease, economic and transportation collapse, and violence caused widespread suffering and death in cities and in the countryside. Both the Whites and Bolsheviks conscripted men, often by force. The Bolsheviks also wanted to consolidate power in the region they controlled. To feed the cities and the growing Red Army, and for ideological reasons, they introduced the policy of War Communism from June 1918. Bolshevik detachments seized grain from peasants, often with force, as one official described: "The measures of exaction are reminiscent of
a medieval inquisition. They make the peasants strip and kneel on the floor, and whip or beat them, sometimes killing them." (Figes) Some peasants fought back, driving away or killing Bolshevik officials. So did some democratic-minded Socialist Revolutionary Party supporters, as in the brief uprising in Yaroslavl in July 1918, or when Fanny Kaplan tried to assassinate Lenin in August of that year. The Bolsheviks also created a secret police called the Cheka to carry out the Red Terror and repress any dissent - although officially it was aimed only at so-called class enemies like wealthy peasants, or kulaks, and the bourgeoisie.
Civilians in White-controlled areas had it little better, as corrupt officers or Cossack warlords often looted what they could, and faced few consequences for violence. The Whites also failed to set up effective civilian government or administration, rarely cooperated with local democratic forces, and often showed hatred for ethnic minorities and Jews. As civilians across the former Russian Empire suffered under the Bolsheviks and the Whites, the civil war continued. The peace with Germany in March 1918 had changed the course of the war, as did Germany's defeat that fall.
In November 1918, Germany and Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire signed an armistice. This meant their occupation of Ukraine, Belarus, and the Baltics came to an end, and by January 1919, the western front of the Russian Civil War brought new opportunities for different factions. The thinly-stretched Red Army pushed west to reconquer as much territory as possible, but it ran into resistance. In the Baltic, the Royal Navy arrived off the Baltic coast to support the renewed push for independence by Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania,
all of whom created small national armies. German Freikorps volunteer units also got involved in the fighting in the Baltics to preserve German influence there, and the Whites even had a small force as well. The new Polish 2nd Republic tried to establish its eastern border before the Red Army arrived in force. In Ukraine, French and Greek troops arrived in the south, while pro-independence Ukrainian forces under Symon Petlura tried to re-establish a republic. Anarchist leader Nestor Makhno's forces controlled part of eastern Ukraine. The Red Army, though, was the strongest force in Ukraine and pushed its opponents back in early 1919,
but failed to reconquer all the lands they wanted. Romanian troops entered Bessarabia and defeated Bolshevik detachments there too. The situation remained chaotic. While the western front shifted dramatically, the Red Army also prepared for a major attack to the east. Lenin was worried about the growing Allied intervention as well as the threatening White forces in the south and east: "Our situation has never been so dangerous as it is now. The imperialists were busy amongst themselves. But now one of the groups has been wiped out by the group of the English,
French, and the Americans. They consider their main task to be to smother world Bolshevism, to smother its main center, the Russian Soviet Republic." (Mawdsley, 127) [Vladimir Lenin] The Allies did oppose Bolshevism, but it wasn't their priority. In fact, they were quickly losing the political will to maintain their intervention. In April 1919, the Red Army struck Kolchak's weaker forces hard. Led by skilled commanders like Mikhail Frunze and Mikhail Tukhachevsky, they threw back the Whites, taking Ufa and Perm by June. The Whites desperately counterattacked,
but some units defected, others deserted, and they were short supplies. The Red Army pushed on to Chelyabinsk and even reached the TobOl river by mid-August, taking many prisoners. By November, they'd taken the White capital of Omsk. The remaining White forces embarked on another Ice March retreat. Kolchak's armies and government were shattered. He had just 15,000 men left, and he'd lost the only productive and populated regions he had. White General Budberg summed up the disaster: "In the army disorganisation; at the Stavka illiteracy and hare-brained schemes; in the government moral decay, discord, and the dominance of the ambitious
and egotistical; in the country uprisings and anarchy; in society panic, selfishness, graft and all kinds of loathsomeness; at the top thrive various scoundrels and adventurers. Where will we get to with such baggage!" (Mawdsley 155) Kolchak had also lost the support of the Allies, who were already looking to get out of Russia. British General Knox wrote to the White government: "At present all seems to me to be absolute chaos, and worse chaos than anything I have seen in the past 12 months.it is my wish to help you, but frankly at present
you make help impossible." (Mawdsley 153) Allied troops, mostly French and Greek, already left Ukraine in spring 1919. In the north, from summer 1919 first the Americans and then the British and other nations withdrew. A large British presence with the Whites in south Russia, and the mostly Japanese, American, and British force in the Far East remained. So the Bolsheviks had defeated the Whites in the east, but even as that campaign raged, White forces in the south went all-in for a decisive victory.
White leaders knew that they had one last chance to turn the tide of the war, given the Bolsheviks' greater economic and military base. The Red Army outnumbered the Whites 230,000 to 50,000, but the Whites were better trained and led, and had some weapons and supplies from the British intervention forces at Novorossisk. The Bolsheviks also struggled with some revolts in their rear from unhappy peasants. In May 1919, White forces moved west into Ukraine, capturing Kharkiv, the Donbass, and Crimea. General Pyotr Vrangel's army advanced on Tsaritsyn, finally capturing it in July and bringing an end to what became known as the
"Red Verdun." Denikin then issued the "Moscow Directive": three White armies would converge on Moscow to defeat the Bolsheviks and overturn the revolution. 60 British tanks, 168 British aircraft and their crews would support the operation. Vrangel's army moved towards Saratov in July, and a few cavalry patrols actually met up with some of Kolchak's isolated horsemen near Lake Elton. But Red Army troops freed up by their victories in the east moved to meet the new threat on the Volga, and stopped Vrangel 100km short of Saratov. In the south, instead of targeting Moscow, White
commanders acting without orders attacked deeper into Ukraine, taking Kyiv and Odesa by the end of August. The Red Army started a spoiling offensive that same month, which pushed the Volunteer Army south. At the same time a White cavalry force under General Konstantin Mamontov ran amok behind Bolshevik lines looting and pillaging. They nearly captured Trotsky by accident, but eventually many riders deserted to keep their spoils. The main drive on Moscow only began in September 1919. The Volunteer Army took Kursk with the help of armoured trains, and the Don Army took
Voronezh. By mid-October, the Whites reached Orel, just 300km from Moscow. Red Army units were in full retreat and thousands were deserting. A British report made a bold prediction: "In the face of resistance, judging from the progress hitherto made, Moscow might be reached within two and a half months." (Mawdsley 196) [British Report] So by the fall of 1919, the White armies threatened Moscow from the south, even though they'd been defeated in the east. The Red Army was still disorganized, but far larger and more capable than ever before. White commanders knew they were running out of time, as their own forces were also unstable - they lived off the land, looted from the peasants, and
were too few in number to fight a prolonged war. Both the Bolsheviks and the Whites understood that the next phase of the Russian Civil War, maybe even the next campaign, would seal Russia's fate. While the Bolsheviks were seizing power in Petrograd in October 1917, the Germans struck at Riga on land and in a daring amphibious operation in the Gulf of Riga to force Russia out of the war. Operation Albion is today largely overshadowed by the October Revolution but it was a unique combined arms operation by the German navy in the First World War. If you want
to learn about Operation Albion, you can check out our new series History's Most Daring Raids. And where can you watch History's Most Daring Raids? On Nebula, a streaming service we're building with other creators where you don't need to sift through a deluge of AI slop: Nebula is made and curated by humans; it's available in 4K resolution in your browser, on your smartphone, Smart TV or streaming box like Apple TV or Roku. And that's not all, on Nebula you can also watch all our regular videos ad-free and earlier than on YouTube. If you go to nebula.tv/thegreatwar you can get an entire year of Nebula for just $30.
Nebula is also a great gift by the way. Just go to gift.nebula.tv/thegreatwar to give an entire year to family and friends even if they already have an account. Whether you watch Nebula on your own or give it to someone else, you are supporting us here at Real Time History directly. We want to thank Jared Kizer for his support of our Russian Civil War series. To learn more about the outbreak of the Russian Civil War, check out our previous video. As usual you can find all the sources we used in the video description below. If you are watching this video on Patreon or Nebula, thank you so much for the support,
we couldn't do it without you. I am Jesse Alexander and this is a production of Real Time History, the only history channel where various scoundrels and adventurers thrive.
