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In February 1917, the first Russian revolution of the year overthrew the Tsar. Politicians formed a Provisional Government, even as the country was still fighting the First World War. But the new government had to share power with more radical workers and soldiers' councils, known as soviets, and it chose to continue the unpopular war. The economy, the army, and society were falling apart. Then, on November 7, the revolutionary Bolshevik party with their armed Red Guards seized power in the capital of Petrograd. Their leaders, like Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky,
called it a revolution in the name of soviet power, but others considered it a coup d'etat. Their plan was to impose communism and spread the revolution to Europe. Some historians consider this the start of the Russian Civil War, though there are heated and ideological debates on the topic. The war that came after the revolution would feature multiple factions, shifting alliances, foreign interventions, and dramatic swings on the battlefields. It would last for years, cost millions of lives, and shape the 20th century.
But all that was not yet clear in the chaotic aftermath of the Bolshevik seizure of power. In Petrograd and Moscow, officer cadets and Cossacks clashed with Bolshevik supporters for days - the fighting in Moscow even saw the Red Guards use artillery and massacre their defeated opponents after victory. Over the next few months, Bolshevik-dominated councils took power in most cities, helped by the Left faction of the Socialist Revolutionary Party. But in much of the countryside, and on the periphery of the old empire, the Bolshevik grip on power was precarious. Some cities even had Bolshevik and democratic groups
claiming power at the same time. Peasants were happy they could seize land from the landlords but didn't share the Bolsheviks ideas for world revolution or state control of the economy. Independence movements took hold in Ukraine, Finland, the South Caucasus, and the Baltics, while the German and Austro-Hungarian armies controlled vast regions, including Russian Poland. Many Cossack regions declared independence as well, though many younger Cossacks supported the Bolsheviks. The former officer corps of the Tsar's army mostly opposed the Bolsheviks,
who killed up to 20,000 officers on the streets of major cities that winter. In the words of historian Laura Engelstein: "The Empire, like a porcelain vase, had crashed to the ground, leaving a heap of tiny shards, impossible to reassemble or reshape into a new form." (Engelstein 363) But the Bolsheviks were determined. Wherever there was resistance to Bolshevik dominance, detachments of soldiers, sailors, and Red Guards arrived on trains manned by Bolshevik railwaymen to crush it. With relatively light fighting in this so-called Railway War, they re-established control over some of the independence-minded regions,
including much of Ukraine and the Orenburg Cossack Host. Bolshevik commander Mikhail Muraviev made Bolshevik intentions plain when his troops conquered Kyiv in January 1918 and massacred Ukrainian opponents: "Here is the power which we have brought from the far north at the point of our bayonets." (Mawdsley 26) The Railway War saw the Bolsheviks gain control over most of the Russian heartland and west. The most politically significant fighting, though, was in south Russia. After the October revolution, many anti-Bolshevik Tsarist officers fled to the relative safety of Ukraine, Siberia, or the Don Cossack region in southern Russia. There,
General Mikhail Alekseev founded the White Russian movement, and generals like Lavr Kornilov and Anton Denikin soon joined him. Denikin later claimed they represented the true Russian nation: "If [no one had been] ready to rise up against the madness and crime of Bolshevik power and to offer their blood and lives for the motherland which was being destroyed - then [the Russian people] would have been not a people, but dung for fertilizing the boundless fields of an old continent which were doomed to colonization by strangers from the West and East. Fortunately we belong to the
tortured but great Russian people." (Mawdsley 21) The Don was a good choice as Cossack Ataman Aleksei Kaledin had proclaimed independence. He received some support from the Germans - who also helped the Whites, even though they'd helped the Bolsheviks before they took power. But the Whites were divided. Alekseev and Kornilov hated each other, some officers were democrats, some were monarchists, and others militarist authoritarians. Some wanted to work with the Allies, others with the Germans. Many were anti-semites, and most opposed independence for
smaller nations like Ukrainians and Cossacks. Their Volunteer Army was tiny and nearly all officers. Few of the leaders were skilled politicians or administrators, and the democratic politicians who joined them from the liberal Kadet party had little influence. Many officers refused to join out of pride, or, like General Aleksei Brusilov, because they thought the cause hopeless: "[The White movement] was doomed to fail because the Russian people, for better or worse, have chosen the Reds [It is] brave and noble [but a] stupid act […] bound to waste a lot of young men's lives." (Figes) From January 1918, Bolshevik forces began to
arrive by rail from the north, while others came from the former Ottoman front to the south. The Cossacks and Whites were too weak to resist - Kaledin committed suicide and revolutionary Cossacks proclaimed a Soviet Republic. The Whites, now 4000 strong, fled Rostov in February with several thousand civilians in tow. Denikin described the crossing of the Don river: "A spectacle never to be forgotten! […] a motley crowd like a gypsy caravan; carts; nondescript civilians plodding along; women in their city clothes and thin shoes stumbling through the snow; and as if lost among them […] all that remained of the
erstwhile great Russian army." (Engelstein 373) In what became known as The Great Ice March, they trekked 250km south through the frozen Steppe with larger Bolshevik forces in pursuit. Local peasants were not very supportive, but some Kuban Cossacks joined them. In April, they attacked Ekaterinodar, the capital of the newly-formed Kuban Soviet Republic, hoping to establish a new base. But Bolshevik forces defeated them, and Kornilov was killed. Denikin took over command of the Volunteer Army and retreated back towards Rostov. The victorious
Bolsheviks dug up Kornilov's grave, mutilated his body and hung it up in the town square. The White Russians and Don Cossacks had survived in the south but were still weak, and Bolshevik leaders named the Winter of 1917-1918 the "Triumphal March of Soviet Power." Then, in March 1918, a controversial decision of Lenin's would shake the country yet again. As Red Guards rode the rails to put down unrest, the Bolshevik-led revolutionary government decided to end the war with Germany. Negotiations began in early December 1917, but the Bolshevik delegation, eventually led by Trotsky,
wanted to draw them out in the hopes revolution would break out in Germany. The Germans responded by launching an offensive in February, known as the 11-Day War. The now-demobilized Russian army and the freshly-founded Red Army could not resist, and the Germans advanced 200km. Lenin wanted to focus on crushing internal opposition to the revolution, so he intervened to accept peace at any price: "We must make sure of throttling the bourgeoisie, and for that we need both hands free […] the peasant army, exhausted to the limit by war, will after the very first defeats [in a revolutionary war]…overthrow the socialist workers' government." (Mawdsley 33)
On March 3, Russia signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. It gave up its claims to the former western parts of the empire, amounting to 90% of the former Russian Empire's coal mines, 50% of its heavy industry, and 30% of its population. Much of these resources were in the Ukrainian National Republic, which was aligned with Berlin and soon to be occupied by Germany and Austria-Hungary. The Bolsheviks moved the capital to Moscow since Petrograd was now too close to German-controlled territory. The treaty had consequences for internal politics as well.
Brest-Litovsk broke the Bolsheviks' tense revolutionary coalition with the Left Socialist Revolutionary Party, which opposed it. Lenin consolidated his power over the Bolshevik party by imposing his will, and some observers argued ending the war even saved the regime. The weakness of the new Red Army in the 11-Day War also led to major reforms to improve its leadership, training, and organization. The Bolsheviks then made Moscow the capital since Petrograd was now too close to German forces. Overall, the treaty accelerated the Bolsheviks' push for a totalitarian state:
"[The] task of our party […] and of Soviet power, is the taking of the most energetic, ruthlessly decisive and Draconian measures to raise the self-discipline and discipline of the workers and peasants…for the creation everywhere of soundly co-ordinated mass organizations held together by a single iron will…and lastly, to train systematically and comprehensively in military matters and military operations the entire adult population of both sexes." (Mawdsley 37) The treaty also shaped the intensifying Russian Civil War given the massive intervention by the Central Powers. National movements in German-occupied regions got some
breathing room. More Russians joined the fledgling anti-revolutionary White armies, as they felt the Treaty betrayed Russia's national interest and allies - and the Germans even gave them some support. The Czechoslovak Legion, made up of former Austro-Hungarian prisoners of war in Russia now feared the Bolsheviks might betray them. The Germans were now free to directly intervene in the Finnish Civil War, and helped the anti-Bolsheviks there to victory. Belarus declared its independence in March, as did the Transcaucasian Federative Republic in April, which rejected the treaty's territorial concessions to the Ottomans.
The British and French felt betrayed by their former ally's separate peace, and decided to send troops to Russia to secure weapons and supply stockpiles they'd sent to help fight the Germans. Some Allied observers even felt the treaty made Bolshevik Russia an ally or vassal of Germany, but for now their intervention was limited to a small detachment at Murmansk - and some Bolsheviks even welcomed them at first given the presence of German troops in Finland. Even so, the Allies could not agree on their policy towards the Bolsheviks. So the Bolshevik peace deal with Germany had hardened the lines in Russia's civil war and
brought a few hundred Allied troops to Russian soil. It also set up a clash between the Bolsheviks and another, much larger foreign force in Russia. Soon after the Bolshevik takeover in November 1917, citizens of the Russian Republic voted in elections planned by the deposed Provisional Government. The Socialist-Revolutionary Party (or SRs) won about 40%, mostly from peasants, followed by the Bolsheviks with about 24%, mostly from workers and soldiers. Many regional parties did well, like in Ukraine,
as did the Cossack lists. The liberal Kadets got 5% from the small middle class, and conservative and religious parties did poorly. (Mawdsley 5-6) But when the parliament, or Constituent Assembly, gathered for the first time in January, Bolshevik Red Guards broke up the meeting after just a few hours. Some of the more radical Socialist Revolutionary Party members, known as the Left SRs, agreed to govern with the Bolsheviks. The moderate Right SRs and other democratically-minded politicians fled east or south. Some historians view the stillbirth of the Constituent Assembly as
the starting point of the Russian Civil War, since the Bolsheviks eliminated a rival to their power, and consolidated their control over the crucial central Russian heartland. Alexander Blok's poem "The Twelve" expressed the ambivalence of the suffering population: "From building to building Stretches a cable On the cable's a placard: 'All Power to the Constituent Assembly!' An old woman keens and weeps beneath it. She just can't understand what it means. Why such a huge scrap of cloth For such a placard?
It would make so many footwraps for the boys, So many are without clothes or shoes …" (Smele 32) But Russian democracy wasn't quite dead yet. Some regions set up their own representative assemblies, like the Far East Republic, and many local groups declared their own states, usually without actually controlling them. But the most important group was based in Samara in the Volga region. There, the SRs and others tried to establish a rival Russian state in spring 1918, in the so-called "democratic counter-revolution." The main problem was the Russian democrats
lacked a reliable armed force to fight against the Bolsheviks' new Red Army. That all changed thanks to an unlikely force, the Czechoslovak Legion. The Legion's 70,000 men had mostly been Austro-Hungarian prisoners of war who switched sides and fought with Russia against Austria-Hungary. In the chaos following the revolution, they found themselves the best-armed and best-organized military force in Russia. The Bolsheviks agreed to let them travel to France via Vladivostok, but also delayed their passage, and the Legion ended up spread out across
thousands of kilometres along the Trans-Siberian railway. The two sides distrusted each other: the Legion mostly opposed Communism, disliked the Bolshevik deal with the Central Powers at Brest-Litovsk, and resented transport delays. The Bolsheviks feared the Legion might oppose them since it was under the authority of the Allied-aligned and financed Czechoslovak National Council. Tensions between Legionaries and Austro-Hungarian POWs boiled over in Chelyabinsk in May. Czech troops suspected a POW had injured a Legionary, and took revenge. Legionnaire Gustav Bečvář recalled: "Fierce shouts broke out in the crowd, and a moment later the Legionaries had thrown themselves upon the culprit. It was useless for the officers to intervene. When, after
a few minutes calm was restored, the Austrian's limp body lay still upon the ground." (Bečvář 88) The violence escalated, which caused Trotsky to demand their surrender. The Legion decided to fight its way to Vladivostok, which caused Trotsky to order members of the Legion to disarm or be shot. He followed this up with another threat on June 4: "An obligatory condition for negotiations is surrender of all arms by the Czecho-Slovaks. Those who do not voluntarily hand over their arms are to be shot on the spot,
in accordance with the order previously given. Echelons which have been forcibly disarmed are to be confined in concentration camps." (Trotsky 282) The Legion seized control of most of the Trans-Siberian railway and many towns along it, and there were rumours they'd captured tons of Tsarist gold. As they approached Ekaterinburg, Bolsheviks killed the Tsar and his family to avoid them being freed. In Samara, SR politicians invited the Legion to overthrow the Bolsheviks there, so in June Legionary commanders sympathetic to Russian democracy stopped in the city. These
democratic politicians then formed the Komuch, a temporary governing assembly for all of Russia, and a fragile People's Army. Chairman Vladimir Volskii announced a program of the rule of law, property rights, and cancelled Bolshevik decrees. Now it seemed the Legion might play a key role in the Russian civil war, since it controlled most of the Trans-Siberian railway - even though this is not what the National Council had planned. Some Allied leaders now hoped that the Legion might form an anti-German and anti-Bolshevik front in Russia instead of coming to France. Some Soviet
and Russian historians even consider the revolt of the Legion to be the start of the civil war, though few historians outside Russia agree. The Legion and the Komuch army quickly extended democratic control to much of the Volga and Urals region in summer 1918. The Bolsheviks needed the vital resources of this region, and organized a new Red Eastern Army Group under Mikhail Muraviev. But Muraviev, a Left SR, defected and leads a brief revolt, though he was soon killed. Trotsky and Muraviev's replacement, General Ioakhim Vatsetis, planned a new offensive
to crush the Legion and the Komuch. Trotsky could scarcely believe this unexpected turn in the war: "At first it might seem incomprehensible that some Czechoslovak Corps, which has wound up with us in Russia through the torturous ways of the World War, should at the given moment prove to be almost the most important factor in deciding the questions of the Russian revolution. Nevertheless, that is the case." (Mawdsley 45) [Leon Trotsky] The Legion and the Komuch had scored some victories, but their position was fragile. Equally fragile was the democratic Provisional
Siberian Government in Vladivostok, which also benefitted from the Legion's protection. Back in April 1918, Lenin had declared the civil war was over: "It can be said with certainty that, in the main, the civil war has ended […] there is no doubt that on the internal front reaction has been irretrievably smashed by the efforts of the insurgent people" (Mawdsley 22) [Vladimir Lenin] But far from being over, by summer 1918, the Russian Civil War had erupted into a kaleidoscope of domestic and foreign factions, multiple fronts, foreign interventions, and total chaos. The Bolsheviks dominated the Russian heartland,
the Germans controlled the west of the old Russian Empire, and small but growing Allied forces controlled important port cities. Escalation was on the horizon, as the Bolsheviks tried to tighten their grip on the peasants, the White armies grew, the Czech Legion protected the fragile Komuch, and Allied intervention policy began to harden against Moscow. By any measure, the Russian Civil War had well and truly begun. 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 Sofia Shirogorova for her help with this episode. If you want to learn more about the Russian Revolutions and the Treaty of Brest-Litvosk,
check out our previous documentaries about that. As usual, you can find all the sources for this episode 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 leading the democratic counter-revolution.
